MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘public education’

“The Progressive Era” Author Murray Rothbard

Posted by M. C. on January 24, 2021

John Swett 100 years ago in San Francisco on public education-

“school children belonged not to parents, but to the State, to society, to the country”.

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The True Plight of Black Americans – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2020

It turns out that blacks, like whites, want better and safer schools for their kids and don’t like to be mugged or have their property vandalized. And like white people, if they have the means, black people cannot wait to leave troubled cities.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/06/walter-e-williams/the-true-plight-of-black-americans/

By

While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder, the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called “systemic racism.” Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities.

Some of the most dangerous big cities are: St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and Philadelphia. The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by liberal Democrats. Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia — haven’t elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century. On top of this, in many of these cities, blacks are mayors, often they dominate city councils, and they are chiefs of police and superintendents of schools.

In 1965, there were no blacks in the U.S. Senate, nor were there any black governors. And only six members of the House of Representatives were black. As of 2019, there is far greater representation in some areas — 52 House members are black. Nine black Americans have served in the Senate, including Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama of Illinois, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris of California. In recent times, there have been three black state governors. The bottom line is that today’s black Americans have significant political power at all levels of government. Yet, what has that meant for a large segment of the black population?

Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite their large, and growing, school budgets. Consider Baltimore, Maryland. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state’s math exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test. That same year in Philadelphia only 19% of eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 16% were proficient in reading. In Detroit, only 4% of its eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 7% were proficient in reading. It’s the same story of academic disaster in other cities run by Democrats.

Violent crime and poor education is not the only problem for Democratic-controlled cities. Because of high crime, poor schools and a less pleasant environment, cities are losing their economic base and their most productive people in droves. When World War II ended, the population of Washington, D.C., was about 800,000; today, it’s about 700,000. In 1950, Baltimore’s population was almost 950,000; today, it’s around 590,000. Detroit’s 1950 population was close to 1.85 million; today, it’s down to 673,000. The population of Camden, New Jersey, in 1950 was nearly 125,000; today it has fallen to 74,000. St. Louis’ 1950 population was more than 856,000; today, it’s less than 294,000. A similar story of population decline can be found in most of our formerly large and prosperous cities. In some cities, the population decline since 1950 is well over 50%, and that includes Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

Academic liberals, civil rights advocates and others blamed the exodus on racism — “white flight” to the suburbs to avoid blacks. But blacks have been fleeing some cities at higher rates than whites. The five cities whose suburbs have the fastest-growing black populations are Miami, Dallas, Washington, Houston and Atlanta. It turns out that blacks, like whites, want better and safer schools for their kids and don’t like to be mugged or have their property vandalized. And like white people, if they have the means, black people cannot wait to leave troubled cities.

White liberals and black politicians focus most of their attention on what the police do, but how relevant is that to the overall tragedy? According to Statista, this year, 172 whites and 88 blacks have died at the hands of police. To put police shootings in a bit of perspective, in Chicago alone in 2020 there have been 1,260 shootings and 256 homicides with blacks being the primary victims. That comes to one shooting victim every three hours and one homicide victim every 15 hours. Three people in Chicago have been killed by police. If one is truly concerned about black deaths, shootings by police should figure way down on one’s list — which is not to excuse bad behavior by some police officers.

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How “Dumbed Down” Has America Become? Here Are 30 People That Actually Believe Trump Is No Longer President – End Of The American Dream

Posted by M. C. on December 27, 2019

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/how-dumbed-down-has-america-become-here-are-30-people-that-actually-believe-trump-is-no-longer-president

by

I knew that Americans were dumb, but I didn’t think it was this bad.  In the hours after President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, thousands of people immediately began wildly celebrating on social media because “Trump is not the president anymore”.  But of course that is not true at all.  Two-thirds of the Senate will have to vote to convict Trump in order to remove him from office, and at this point that seems exceedingly unlikely.  Anyone that has received even the most basic education about the U.S. Constitution should know this, so how is it possible that there are vast hordes of people out there that actually believe that Donald Trump is no longer the president of the United States?

This is yet another example that demonstrates how spectacularly our system of public education has failed.  Not too long ago, I wrote an article about a recent study that found that 15-year-old students in China are nearly four full grade levels ahead of 15-year-old students in the United States in math.  The rest of the world is running circles around us, and our population is getting more “dumbed down” with each passing year.

But you have to be a very special kind of stupid to actually think that Donald Trump is no longer our president.

The following are 30 actual Twitter posts that were posted shortly after the impeachment votes were taken, and the level of idiocy displayed is absolutely chilling.  Since I am importing these tweets directly from Twitter, only the links may show up if you are getting this article in your email or reading it on another website.  If all of the tweets are not displaying properly and you want to see them, just visit the original article.  And now that I have gotten that out of the way, here are the tweets…

I could almost feel my eyeballs burning as I read those tweets because of the extreme level of stupidity displayed in them.

Are Americans really this ignorant? Read the rest of this entry »

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Working Teens Dragged Back to School By Bounty Hunters | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2019

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/working-teens-dragged-back-to-school-by-bounty-hunters/

By Joe Jarvis

There has been an uptick over the past year in “children skipping school,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

And that is where the problem begins. Because the article does not talk about “children.” It talks about teenagers, young adults. They are “adolescents,” the invented stage between childhood and adulthood which keeps teens in an oppressive purgatory.

And why are these “children” skipping school?

Greene County Career Center, a high school in Xenia, Ohio, dispatches a truancy interventionist to meet with students at home or in school to determine why they are missing classes. ”She has gone to work sites before, if she knows a kid is working,” said Jenny Adkins, the school’s supervisor of student services.

That’s it, let’s drag these “kids” away from work and back to school. Forget making money and building experience in the real world. Let’s keep the real world on hold so they can get a public education.

Especially ironic is that this particular school is called a “Career Center.” Nothing says career training like snatching a teen from work.

So the first problem is that teens are being treated like children. Some have made the choice to work, and the government forces them to attend school instead.

The second problem is that it is taken as a given that school attendance is positive. They act like just being inside a school building will magically educate students. That’s probably why so many people end up with jobs that require little more than a warm body sitting in a cubicle.

It terrifies most people to have a job where getting paid depends on your work output. Yet that is the training that would be most valuable. The gig economy is growing, and getting paid depends on finishing tasks, not putting in your hours.

But schools are on a crusade to encourage attendance. Why? Because that is where the administrators’ incentives lie.

States typically fund school districts based on attendance, so school officials worry about losing money due to absent students.

And there you have it. It has nothing to do with “the children.” It has everything to do with money.

“Truancy interventionists,” are simply bounty hunters for the school. They round up the escaped chattel and return them to their pen.

Of course, it is tempting to equate higher budgets with better education. But the data simply does not back this up.

Some of the worst schools in Camden, New Jersey spend over $23,000 per student. And some of the best schools in American Fork, Utah spend just $5,600 per student.

Most of the ballooning school budgets go to administration. The chart below shows the increase in students, teachers, and administration since 1950.

school administration costs chart

There are about twice as many students, and seven times as many administrators and other non-teaching staff…

If public schools could be replaced with optional resource centers for teenagers, that would be a massive improvement. Provide laundry, showers, and a safe environment. Teens, especially those in bad living situations, could go to learn on their own, or get help from the staff. Even provide certain meals. The cost would be less than public schools, and the benefit would be astronomically higher.

Look, anything the government does is going to be done terribly. It will be inefficient. The incentives will be aligned all wrong. And this solution would have those same flaws. But it would be an improvement.

Perhaps these “Charter Resource Centers” could be placed near some of the worst schools, and allow teens to opt out of mandatory school, and opt into this alternative. If the funding followed them, this might make a difference.

But the current public school system ruins lives. It destroys potential. It creates conflicts in society.

Skipping school is not a problem. It is the solution.

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A Radical Treatise on Public Education – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on December 2, 2017

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/12/no_author/a-radical-treatise-on-public-education/

 He reveals the dysfunctionality behind mass schooling, which is more a mass jobs project than an inspiring means by which to instill a body of knowledge, far less stoke creativity, curiosity, and inspiration. He makes an supremely convincing case for LESS school, not more and reveals the destructive lessons instilled by the way we do school, like conformity and subordination.

Essentially, school “ensures a workforce that will not rebel…that will be physically, intellectually, and emotionally dependent upon corporate institutions for their incomes, self-esteem, and stimulation, and that will learn to find social meaning in their lives solely in the production and consumption of material goods. They haven’t changed much since the 1890s because they don’t need to –they perform precisely as they are intended.”

Gatto’s Underground History of American Education is worth a read.

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