"Understanding others is more important than persuading others."
-Paul Mero
12 comments:
Anonymous
said...
But Rob...Mero says he already has us all figured out. We who love the fact that our kids are enrolled in Utah's excellent public schools are nothing but a bunch of slave holders.
p.s. Paul, I think you forgot about home-schooling in your little analogy. Parents can always opt out of the "oppressive" public school system and do it themselves! Slaves never had an opt-out provision. An obvious distinction in your inflammatory, and ill-conceived analogy is that slaves couldn't opt-out: take a break when they chose, pick corn instead of cotton, start work at noon rather than dawn.
I mean this with all sincerity, please help me understand how [even] the Sutherland Institute has not canned you. SI may have a reputation for being an incredibly conservative think-tank, but the operative words there are that they hold themselves out to be a "think-tank," a clearinghouse for intelligent and considered thoughts on conservative topics. Sir, your treatise was neither intelligent nor considered. If it was, you would have been able to see the obvious flaws in logic in your analogy.
Moreover, as an ethical consideration, I would hope that SI would also treat very seriously anything it puts out under its name dealing with a delicate and deeply stirring subject for many people. In case there are more analogies coming from SI, let me highlight a few that deserve this heightened level of consideration: 9/11, the Holocaust, Hitler, Katrina, Somalia/Sudan, Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor, and other like tragic situations where otherwise innocent people died. Slavery is counted among them.
In the future, I hope you would exercise some discretion in what you allow to go out on SI letterhead. And SI I expect the same from you in who you allow to represent your organization. Robust political dialogue has at its core a fundamental committment to respect for others. If you cannot abide, then prepare for the loss in whatever esteem had been previously accorded your idealogy.
Our Institute is hosting the final of three sessions from our Transcend Series on June 14...Civilty is the subject. Please accept my invitatin to join us (Jeremy too, and any others of your colleagues at Amicus).
A part-time thinker is like a little knowledge...very dangerous. In this case, very uncivil.
Both political extremes often suffer from an observable phenomenon in that they both feel like disagreement is always a result of a lack of information..."if you only knew" or "if you would have asked me first" kinds of outbursts.
Believe it or not, I am human so I have many faults and weaknesses. Even so, I am 50 years old and have been in the business of politics and think tanks for nearly 30 years, and I can assure you that there are very few times these days when I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) that I haven't thought through or discussed with my colleague (and "opponents") nearly every aspect of an issue.
This isn't to say I'm not wrong about things or that I cannot learn from others. I am and can on several counts.
But on this one, and "I mean this with all sincerity," you're simply wrong.
I would invite you to read your fellow bloggers on this same issue, particularly Craig Johnson's blog and Craig Axford's blog on the UT Dem site. While they would agree with your position, they at least have been civil about their approach in discussing it...to which they deserve heaps of credit.
You might also check your liberal credentials at the door to make sure you are at the right party. Your comments belie the nature of political dialogue in general and the blog world in particular.
If mankind were to dispose of all of the topics you claim are forbidden to discuss publicly, then the future of mankind would be in peril. It is exactly many of history's most horrible experiences that provide excellent lessons for future generations.
I presume you are an advocate of free speech? But I guess not for me or anyone else who might offend your incredibly sensitive sensibilities.
Lastly, I would invite you to read the whole essay I wrote, not just the abbreviated (and edited) op-ed from the Trib. No doubt you will still disagree with my thesis...that coercive systems over the most fundamental of human relationships have no place in a free society...but at least you might be forced to think a bit more than you obviously have not to this point.
BTW, my wife and I have home schooled our children for 19 years...I don't know how I could have overlooked that point!
Okay, another BTW (it's this second one that always gets me in trouble)...surely you are too high-brow to watch a movie like Talledegah Nights with Will Ferrell, so I will share this with you...in that movie, right before Will Ferrell's character produces the most insulting comment, he says, "with all due respect." It seems he thoroughly believes that if he prefaces every insult with "with all due respect," then it's okay to insult someone.
I was reminded of that scene when you prefaced your insult about why I haven't been fired yet with "I mean this with all sincerity."
Paul: You cannot always claim the moral high ground of civility as a response to detailed and yes, civil, critiques of your work. Your post, while not brief, did not respond to the obvious home-school opt-out distinction to the slavery analogy I raised in my post.
Contrary to your assertion, I did read your entire essay (thank you Craig for the link) as well as Craig's reply. Because I thought Craig did a good job fleshing out the the bulk of the problems with your theory, I limited my post to two points: first, the opt-out issue, and second, your lack of sensitivity and logic in using slavery to support your position.
I believe language is a powerful tool and accordingly choose my words carefully. When I stated "I mean this with all sincerity," it was not meant as tongue in cheek or as a leavening statement. I would [still] sincerely like to understand how SI tolerates the dishonor with which you treated the slavery subject and those affected by its oppression. That is a fair question and critique, one that I wonder if your board ever entertains.
The rest of my comments on that point were civil as well as logical and considered [I used the word sir and opined on the topic of discretion and not your character-- no name calling here]. The topic of civility aside, I thank you for your invitation to attend an SI event, but my experience in doing so has led me to conclude that they rarely invite or tolerate dissenting viewpoints.
And you are right, I have not seen Talledegah [sic] Nights.
One final BTW for me, too. One final inaccurate statement of your response: I do not claim that the topics I listed are forbidden to discuss in public. What I said was that those topics deserve a "heightened level of consideration" when discussing them, and particularly when using them to analogize a point. I spent an entire semester during my undergraduate education discussing and analyzing one of the listed topics, during which the discussions were always respectful and not inflammatory. I found the dialogue to be robust and enlightening. That class was comprised of twenty-something college kids who did not have the benefit of 30 years in the "business" of politics and think tanks.
Your post made me laugh too, Paul. Thank you for that.
I did respond to the "opt-out" point...at least I did in one of the blogs with the two Craigs. Here is the recap: would slavery be any less evil if the slave holder allowed the slave to spend Sundays with his or her children, or to plant a private garden just for his or her family, or stroll down to the creek to fish for an hour?
I would say no. A slave is still a slave notwithstanding acts of "generosity" by the slave holder.
Utahns may home school because the state permits it, not because parents have a prior right to do so.
You and your colleagues are correct about the sensitivity issue. I simply do not see what you see. I do understand a "major" versus a "minor" type of moral difference. But unlike you, evidently, I can still learn from any difference or similarity as the case may be.
I happen to believe that you are overly-sensitive in this matter and that prevents you from learning something new or seeing with different eyes.
As it happened, my conversation with Craig Axford suggested the opposite scenario...I felt he was entirely too insensitive to the long history of state abuses toward minority groups seeking autonomy (American Indians, Irish-Catholic immigrants, Mormons, etc.) His response, if I read him correctly, was there is always a price to pay to mainstream any culture...and that, all things considered, forcing public schools on people is a very small price to pay while rendering great dividends to society over the long run.
I am also particularly sensitive to counter-arguments weighed solely on the basis of "sensitivity." A very subjective thing.
I am not a slave holder, nor am I a government-enforcer of coercive public schooling. On the other hand, I advocate for freedom in these cases. Does that make me insensitive to the slave holder or the government-enforcer? If so, so be it.
And, yes, I get it that this is not the point you are making. Your point is more along the lines of "how dare you compare the evil of slavery to the greatness of public schools." I get it.
The difference between us in this case is that I am not willing to admit to a "greatness" and you are not willing to admit to the similarities of restrictive systems.
Hence, what you describe as "dishonor," other people, obviously including me and mine, see as a perfectly rational point of concern in the voucher debate, and more broadly regarding educational freedom.
If you were to join us on June 14, and I genuinely reassert my invitation to you and yours, you would be a part of a discussion about how civility is only a function of disagreement.
What I have found in these blog debates is the inability (an inability I describe as incivility) to be able to work together or communicate effectively when parties disagree. Understanding seems to fly out the window and incivility, such as invoking "taboo" subjects, seems to follow.
So, I reinvite you. Despite your stated experiences about these kinds of events, you are dealing with someone (me) and something (our Transcend process) that you have never dealt with before. You will be a better person for having joined us...as will I and all the others.
Seems like your beef is with cumpulsory education. A voucher to go to a private school still seems to leave you under the finger of the system.
You would advocate erasing the boundaries between the private and public spheres if only for the satisfaction of sticking it to the man regardless of any long term consequences to our system and society.
Seems like home-schooling for 19 years is pretty much like doing your own thing although you can't seem to live with the "horrible" indignity of accounting to the "system" if only to honor society's interest in the future generations.
I can't imagine you actually arguing that even if a parent by divine right has the liberty to whatever they please with their children that somehow society, or even a concerned neighbor, has no business asking for some accountability to the greater good.
In your hyper libertarian world-view I don't see why we can't balance the interests of individual rights and freedoms with some "compelling interests" of society as a whole. The tension between these two interests were integral in the original debates about our constitutional system in the first place. And neither was eliminated--they were balanced.
"A good analogy does not just invoke some chance resemblance between the thing being explained and the thing introduced to explain it. It capitalizes on a deep similarity between the principles that govern the two things." - Steven Pinker, Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University
Paul,
I am a conservative, I have responded to many posts here about school vouchers and what I see as the mostly intellectually bankrupt excuses to deny them - Just ask Emily - but I think your analogy is way off.
A little thought experiment - Would slavery have been any less evil if a slave owner had said "You don't have to work for me, but you do have to get a job. When you get your own job you'll have to pay for all of your own housing and food and clothes out of that money, you can't count on me for that anymore. But you're still free to go get employment somewhere else."
My answer is yes, slavery would be less evil. Slavery would cease to be slavery.
Compulsory school is not evil in any way. If I have to pay taxes at all towards other people's children, I'd rather do it while they are young for 13 years than when they are old for 40, 50 or even 60 years on welfare rolls.
I don't have the same sensitivity issues all the liberals here have, I just think you missed the mark with a flawed analogy.
Under your thought experiment, would slavery be less evil? Yes, because under your scenario it wouldn't be slavery.
A better point, perhaps, is this...would slavery be any less evil if the slave holder allowed minor freedoms such as to visit with their chidlren, or plant a garden, or go fishing once in a while...but still remain slaves? The answer, for me anyway, is yes, it's still evil.
Compulsory, government-directed, education is an evil of one magnitude. Period. And perhaps the only way for you and others to realize this is to have a "problem" with one of your children in the system and have the system tell you "tough luck." Or have to ask the system for "permission" to exercise a fundamental human right over the upbringing of your own children.
I find it quite disconcerting that reasonable people DON'T have a problem with this sort of intrusion. Just go along to get along. It tells me much more about supporters of the system than the inherent failings in the system.
And I should add, that I and my family, even as home schoolers, have had nothing but wonderful relationships with the "system" in Utah. But the point, then, is not "what is the argument if all is fine?" The point is, all IS fine when you trust parents...it's okay to trust your neighbors with their own children. It's okay to rid ourselves of an anachronistic factory-model "rule" of education.
There is nothing radical about responsible freedom and being treated like a responsible parent. I believe that Utah's parents would do even much better than they already do if we didn't have a system in place that coddles lousy parents (by the way, a coercive system needs lousy parents to justify itself) and exacerbates the pressures of life that lead parents to delegate their responsibilities to others.
Breathe the air of freedom and responsibility, brother.
What is the voucher connection? Parents trapped in the system can partially escape if they choose
As I read your post, I’m particularly drawn to the sentence “Compulsory, government directed, education is an evil of one magnitude.” I’m assuming that you don’t have a problem with compulsory education and that the government directed part is the evil you speak of.
I think I could live with your slavery analogy and the evils of government coercion with a few minor tweaks. But first let me lay some groundwork.
To give you a little background about me; I'm 30 years old, single and I have no children. I had been a property owner for 7 years.
I paid taxes for schools just like everyone else except I don't use the system at all. My parents are in the same boat and have been for about 7 years. My grandparents were in similar situations for almost 40 years before they passed on.
We are the true "slaves" of this system, whether it be public schools or charter schools or private schools funded by vouchers. We have no say in how these schools operate and the system doesn't care about us. However, the system is more than glad to take our money and use it for what it sees fit. What happens if we decide not to abide by this? The government auctions our homes to pay tax liens.
Talk about a coercive and immoral system.
Maybe it's because I'm not a professional thinker but I still don't see how the public school system is coercive? At least not to the children that attend, their parents, or to the point you try to convey. I'm certainly no fan of the concept of public schools - I agreed with Reagan, let's dismantle the Department of Education - but I still don't see how the public school system is akin to slavery, at least not for its participants. For people like me? Possibly.
People certainly have the right to opt out of the system. Slaves did not. That's why I presented a more congruent analogy to slavery. People still have the option to send their kids to private school, they just have to *gasp* pay for it.
Is that right? No. Should vouchers be given a chance? Absolutely. Has the government done substantive work to address the problems presented by public schools? Hardly. Have the democrats/liberals offered us anything but the status quo? Of course not. Does the current public school system constitute an immoral institution even remotely akin to the magnitude of slavery; something that nearly tore the nation apart and literally pitted brother against brother? I just don't see it.
Sutherland proposed nearly four years ago that there should be a two-tiered tax system with four rates: the lower tier is for the poor (at the lowest tax rate) and those households without school-age children and households with school-age children but not using the public school system.
And, for the alst time, you cannot "opt out" of a compulsory system. Home schoolers cannot and private schools cannot...the former must get permission and the latter is regulated by the state.
One last posting on this interesting thread...comments from Yale law professor, [African American and hardly a conservative] Stephen Carter, from his book, Civility:
(And forgive the laspes in narrative context...you'll just have to pick up this fine book and read it all for yourself)
"In exercising this right [fundamental liberty interest of parents in the education and upbringing of their children]...a child's parents try to create [a] morally coherent world...Because all families are different, each child's moral world would then be distinct; naturally there would be overlap, but there would be diveristy too. Unfortunately, much about our modern society proposes instead to build a single moral world in which all parents are required to raise their children. As parents of two magnificent children, my wife and I occasionally feel as though the state views the family as a little citizen-making factory, which must be run according to governmnet specifications lest we lose our license. Lost in the march toward regulation of the family is the traditional notion that the family is prior to the state, which means that the state did not create the family and has only a very thin power to regulate it...
"Remarkably, contemporary liberal theorists are unable to come to grips with the totalizing implications of this analysis: it turns out that the state does after all have the power to stifle the construction centers of dissent from its preferred meanings, as long as it gets to the potential dissenters while they are children. And some liberal theorists not only applaud the effort but wish the state would do more...And all of them share a similar starting point: the assumption that the state is likely to make wise decisions and parents are likely to make bad ones...
"...history suggests that the state has often made bad decisions, not good ones, about how and why to run its compulsory schools. The deeper problem is that the family becomes, in this liberal vision, not a fundamental institution on which society itself rests, but a little citizen-making factory, existing by sufferance of the state and principally to do the work the state requires. If the state decides to standardize its citizens through the device of standardizing its children, it is evidently the responsibility of the parents not to resist that effort, but to assist it - or to get out of the way...
"We often hear it said that if we are to make an error, we should make the error on the side of protecting the child. This is a wonderful theory without any practical implications, other than the disruption of family life...we should err in the other direction: we should err on the side of assuming that families are loving places with the best interests of the child at their hearts. Consequently, the state should intervene when the case is clear, not when the case is marginal."
So why not trust parents with vouchers? If Utah soceity has decided that all income tax dollars will go to educate children, then why do we care where they are educated if we truly trust our parents?
12 comments:
But Rob...Mero says he already has us all figured out. We who love the fact that our kids are enrolled in Utah's excellent public schools are nothing but a bunch of slave holders.
p.s. Paul, I think you forgot about home-schooling in your little analogy. Parents can always opt out of the "oppressive" public school system and do it themselves! Slaves never had an opt-out provision. An obvious distinction in your inflammatory, and ill-conceived analogy is that slaves couldn't opt-out: take a break when they chose, pick corn instead of cotton, start work at noon rather than dawn.
I mean this with all sincerity, please help me understand how [even] the Sutherland Institute has not canned you. SI may have a reputation for being an incredibly conservative think-tank, but the operative words there are that they hold themselves out to be a "think-tank," a clearinghouse for intelligent and considered thoughts on conservative topics. Sir, your treatise was neither intelligent nor considered. If it was, you would have been able to see the obvious flaws in logic in your analogy.
Moreover, as an ethical consideration, I would hope that SI would also treat very seriously anything it puts out under its name dealing with a delicate and deeply stirring subject for many people. In case there are more analogies coming from SI, let me highlight a few that deserve this heightened level of consideration: 9/11, the Holocaust, Hitler, Katrina, Somalia/Sudan, Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor, and other like tragic situations where otherwise innocent people died. Slavery is counted among them.
In the future, I hope you would exercise some discretion in what you allow to go out on SI letterhead. And SI I expect the same from you in who you allow to represent your organization. Robust political dialogue has at its core a fundamental committment to respect for others. If you cannot abide, then prepare for the loss in whatever esteem had been previously accorded your idealogy.
Dear Kelly Ann,
Our Institute is hosting the final of three sessions from our Transcend Series on June 14...Civilty is the subject. Please accept my invitatin to join us (Jeremy too, and any others of your colleagues at Amicus).
A part-time thinker is like a little knowledge...very dangerous. In this case, very uncivil.
Both political extremes often suffer from an observable phenomenon in that they both feel like disagreement is always a result of a lack of information..."if you only knew" or "if you would have asked me first" kinds of outbursts.
Believe it or not, I am human so I have many faults and weaknesses. Even so, I am 50 years old and have been in the business of politics and think tanks for nearly 30 years, and I can assure you that there are very few times these days when I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) that I haven't thought through or discussed with my colleague (and "opponents") nearly every aspect of an issue.
This isn't to say I'm not wrong about things or that I cannot learn from others. I am and can on several counts.
But on this one, and "I mean this with all sincerity," you're simply wrong.
I would invite you to read your fellow bloggers on this same issue, particularly Craig Johnson's blog and Craig Axford's blog on the UT Dem site. While they would agree with your position, they at least have been civil about their approach in discussing it...to which they deserve heaps of credit.
You might also check your liberal credentials at the door to make sure you are at the right party. Your comments belie the nature of political dialogue in general and the blog world in particular.
If mankind were to dispose of all of the topics you claim are forbidden to discuss publicly, then the future of mankind would be in peril. It is exactly many of history's most horrible experiences that provide excellent lessons for future generations.
I presume you are an advocate of free speech? But I guess not for me or anyone else who might offend your incredibly sensitive sensibilities.
Lastly, I would invite you to read the whole essay I wrote, not just the abbreviated (and edited) op-ed from the Trib. No doubt you will still disagree with my thesis...that coercive systems over the most fundamental of human relationships have no place in a free society...but at least you might be forced to think a bit more than you obviously have not to this point.
BTW, my wife and I have home schooled our children for 19 years...I don't know how I could have overlooked that point!
Okay, another BTW (it's this second one that always gets me in trouble)...surely you are too high-brow to watch a movie like Talledegah Nights with Will Ferrell, so I will share this with you...in that movie, right before Will Ferrell's character produces the most insulting comment, he says, "with all due respect." It seems he thoroughly believes that if he prefaces every insult with "with all due respect," then it's okay to insult someone.
I was reminded of that scene when you prefaced your insult about why I haven't been fired yet with "I mean this with all sincerity."
It made me laugh. Thank you for that.
Best, PTM
Paul: You cannot always claim the moral high ground of civility as a response to detailed and yes, civil, critiques of your work. Your post, while not brief, did not respond to the obvious home-school opt-out distinction to the slavery analogy I raised in my post.
Contrary to your assertion, I did read your entire essay (thank you Craig for the link) as well as Craig's reply. Because I thought Craig did a good job fleshing out the the bulk of the problems with your theory, I limited my post to two points: first, the opt-out issue, and second, your lack of sensitivity and logic in using slavery to support your position.
I believe language is a powerful tool and accordingly choose my words carefully. When I stated "I mean this with all sincerity," it was not meant as tongue in cheek or as a leavening statement. I would [still] sincerely like to understand how SI tolerates the dishonor with which you treated the slavery subject and those affected by its oppression. That is a fair question and critique, one that I wonder if your board ever entertains.
The rest of my comments on that point were civil as well as logical and considered [I used the word sir and opined on the topic of discretion and not your character-- no name calling here]. The topic of civility aside, I thank you for your invitation to attend an SI event, but my experience in doing so has led me to conclude that they rarely invite or tolerate dissenting viewpoints.
And you are right, I have not seen Talledegah [sic] Nights.
One final BTW for me, too. One final inaccurate statement of your response: I do not claim that the topics I listed are forbidden to discuss in public. What I said was that those topics deserve a "heightened level of consideration" when discussing them, and particularly when using them to analogize a point. I spent an entire semester during my undergraduate education discussing and analyzing one of the listed topics, during which the discussions were always respectful and not inflammatory. I found the dialogue to be robust and enlightening. That class was comprised of twenty-something college kids who did not have the benefit of 30 years in the "business" of politics and think tanks.
Your post made me laugh too, Paul. Thank you for that.
Best,
KA
Kelly Ann,
I did respond to the "opt-out" point...at least I did in one of the blogs with the two Craigs. Here is the recap: would slavery be any less evil if the slave holder allowed the slave to spend Sundays with his or her children, or to plant a private garden just for his or her family, or stroll down to the creek to fish for an hour?
I would say no. A slave is still a slave notwithstanding acts of "generosity" by the slave holder.
Utahns may home school because the state permits it, not because parents have a prior right to do so.
You and your colleagues are correct about the sensitivity issue. I simply do not see what you see. I do understand a "major" versus a "minor" type of moral difference. But unlike you, evidently, I can still learn from any difference or similarity as the case may be.
I happen to believe that you are overly-sensitive in this matter and that prevents you from learning something new or seeing with different eyes.
As it happened, my conversation with Craig Axford suggested the opposite scenario...I felt he was entirely too insensitive to the long history of state abuses toward minority groups seeking autonomy (American Indians, Irish-Catholic immigrants, Mormons, etc.) His response, if I read him correctly, was there is always a price to pay to mainstream any culture...and that, all things considered, forcing public schools on people is a very small price to pay while rendering great dividends to society over the long run.
I am also particularly sensitive to counter-arguments weighed solely on the basis of "sensitivity." A very subjective thing.
I am not a slave holder, nor am I a government-enforcer of coercive public schooling. On the other hand, I advocate for freedom in these cases. Does that make me insensitive to the slave holder or the government-enforcer? If so, so be it.
And, yes, I get it that this is not the point you are making. Your point is more along the lines of "how dare you compare the evil of slavery to the greatness of public schools." I get it.
The difference between us in this case is that I am not willing to admit to a "greatness" and you are not willing to admit to the similarities of restrictive systems.
Hence, what you describe as "dishonor," other people, obviously including me and mine, see as a perfectly rational point of concern in the voucher debate, and more broadly regarding educational freedom.
If you were to join us on June 14, and I genuinely reassert my invitation to you and yours, you would be a part of a discussion about how civility is only a function of disagreement.
What I have found in these blog debates is the inability (an inability I describe as incivility) to be able to work together or communicate effectively when parties disagree. Understanding seems to fly out the window and incivility, such as invoking "taboo" subjects, seems to follow.
So, I reinvite you. Despite your stated experiences about these kinds of events, you are dealing with someone (me) and something (our Transcend process) that you have never dealt with before. You will be a better person for having joined us...as will I and all the others.
Best, PTM
Mero,
Seems like your beef is with cumpulsory education. A voucher to go to a private school still seems to leave you under the finger of the system.
You would advocate erasing the boundaries between the private and public spheres if only for the satisfaction of sticking it to the man regardless of any long term consequences to our system and society.
Seems like home-schooling for 19 years is pretty much like doing your own thing although you can't seem to live with the "horrible" indignity of accounting to the "system" if only to honor society's interest in the future generations.
I can't imagine you actually arguing that even if a parent by divine right has the liberty to whatever they please with their children that somehow society, or even a concerned neighbor, has no business asking for some accountability to the greater good.
In your hyper libertarian world-view I don't see why we can't balance the interests of individual rights and freedoms with some "compelling interests" of society as a whole. The tension between these two interests were integral in the original debates about our constitutional system in the first place. And neither was eliminated--they were balanced.
"A good analogy does not just invoke some chance resemblance between the thing being explained and the thing introduced to explain it. It capitalizes on a deep similarity between the principles that govern the two things." - Steven Pinker, Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University
Paul,
I am a conservative, I have responded to many posts here about school vouchers and what I see as the mostly intellectually bankrupt excuses to deny them - Just ask Emily - but I think your analogy is way off.
A little thought experiment - Would slavery have been any less evil if a slave owner had said "You don't have to work for me, but you do have to get a job. When you get your own job you'll have to pay for all of your own housing and food and clothes out of that money, you can't count on me for that anymore. But you're still free to go get employment somewhere else."
My answer is yes, slavery would be less evil. Slavery would cease to be slavery.
Compulsory school is not evil in any way. If I have to pay taxes at all towards other people's children, I'd rather do it while they are young for 13 years than when they are old for 40, 50 or even 60 years on welfare rolls.
I don't have the same sensitivity issues all the liberals here have, I just think you missed the mark with a flawed analogy.
Thanks, Steve,
Under your thought experiment, would slavery be less evil? Yes, because under your scenario it wouldn't be slavery.
A better point, perhaps, is this...would slavery be any less evil if the slave holder allowed minor freedoms such as to visit with their chidlren, or plant a garden, or go fishing once in a while...but still remain slaves? The answer, for me anyway, is yes, it's still evil.
Compulsory, government-directed, education is an evil of one magnitude. Period. And perhaps the only way for you and others to realize this is to have a "problem" with one of your children in the system and have the system tell you "tough luck." Or have to ask the system for "permission" to exercise a fundamental human right over the upbringing of your own children.
I find it quite disconcerting that reasonable people DON'T have a problem with this sort of intrusion. Just go along to get along. It tells me much more about supporters of the system than the inherent failings in the system.
And I should add, that I and my family, even as home schoolers, have had nothing but wonderful relationships with the "system" in Utah. But the point, then, is not "what is the argument if all is fine?" The point is, all IS fine when you trust parents...it's okay to trust your neighbors with their own children. It's okay to rid ourselves of an anachronistic factory-model "rule" of education.
There is nothing radical about responsible freedom and being treated like a responsible parent. I believe that Utah's parents would do even much better than they already do if we didn't have a system in place that coddles lousy parents (by the way, a coercive system needs lousy parents to justify itself) and exacerbates the pressures of life that lead parents to delegate their responsibilities to others.
Breathe the air of freedom and responsibility, brother.
What is the voucher connection? Parents trapped in the system can partially escape if they choose
Best, PTM
Paul,
As I read your post, I’m particularly drawn to the sentence “Compulsory, government directed, education is an evil of one magnitude.” I’m assuming that you don’t have a problem with compulsory education and that the government directed part is the evil you speak of.
I think I could live with your slavery analogy and the evils of government coercion with a few minor tweaks. But first let me lay some groundwork.
To give you a little background about me; I'm 30 years old, single and I have no children. I had been a property owner for 7 years.
I paid taxes for schools just like everyone else except I don't use the system at all. My parents are in the same boat and have been for about 7 years. My grandparents were in similar situations for almost 40 years before they passed on.
We are the true "slaves" of this system, whether it be public schools or charter schools or private schools funded by vouchers. We have no say in how these schools operate and the system doesn't care about us. However, the system is more than glad to take our money and use it for what it sees fit. What happens if we decide not to abide by this? The government auctions our homes to pay tax liens.
Talk about a coercive and immoral system.
Maybe it's because I'm not a professional thinker but I still don't see how the public school system is coercive? At least not to the children that attend, their parents, or to the point you try to convey. I'm certainly no fan of the concept of public schools - I agreed with Reagan, let's dismantle the Department of Education - but I still don't see how the public school system is akin to slavery, at least not for its participants. For people like me? Possibly.
People certainly have the right to opt out of the system. Slaves did not. That's why I presented a more congruent analogy to slavery. People still have the option to send their kids to private school, they just have to *gasp* pay for it.
Is that right? No. Should vouchers be given a chance? Absolutely. Has the government done substantive work to address the problems presented by public schools? Hardly. Have the democrats/liberals offered us anything but the status quo? Of course not. Does the current public school system constitute an immoral institution even remotely akin to the magnitude of slavery; something that nearly tore the nation apart and literally pitted brother against brother? I just don't see it.
Sutherland proposed nearly four years ago that there should be a two-tiered tax system with four rates: the lower tier is for the poor (at the lowest tax rate) and those households without school-age children and households with school-age children but not using the public school system.
And, for the alst time, you cannot "opt out" of a compulsory system. Home schoolers cannot and private schools cannot...the former must get permission and the latter is regulated by the state.
One last posting on this interesting thread...comments from Yale law professor, [African American and hardly a conservative] Stephen Carter, from his book, Civility:
(And forgive the laspes in narrative context...you'll just have to pick up this fine book and read it all for yourself)
"In exercising this right [fundamental liberty interest of parents in the education and upbringing of their children]...a child's parents try to create [a] morally coherent world...Because all families are different, each child's moral world would then be distinct; naturally there would be overlap, but there would be diveristy too. Unfortunately, much about our modern society proposes instead to build a single moral world in which all parents are required to raise their children. As parents of two magnificent children, my wife and I occasionally feel as though the state views the family as a little citizen-making factory, which must be run according to governmnet specifications lest we lose our license. Lost in the march toward regulation of the family is the traditional notion that the family is prior to the state, which means that the state did not create the family and has only a very thin power to regulate it...
"Remarkably, contemporary liberal theorists are unable to come to grips with the totalizing implications of this analysis: it turns out that the state does after all have the power to stifle the construction centers of dissent from its preferred meanings, as long as it gets to the potential dissenters while they are children. And some liberal theorists not only applaud the effort but wish the state would do more...And all of them share a similar starting point: the assumption that the state is likely to make wise decisions and parents are likely to make bad ones...
"...history suggests that the state has often made bad decisions, not good ones, about how and why to run its compulsory schools. The deeper problem is that the family becomes, in this liberal vision, not a fundamental institution on which society itself rests, but a little citizen-making factory, existing by sufferance of the state and principally to do the work the state requires. If the state decides to standardize its citizens through the device of standardizing its children, it is evidently the responsibility of the parents not to resist that effort, but to assist it - or to get out of the way...
"We often hear it said that if we are to make an error, we should make the error on the side of protecting the child. This is a wonderful theory without any practical implications, other than the disruption of family life...we should err in the other direction: we should err on the side of assuming that families are loving places with the best interests of the child at their hearts. Consequently, the state should intervene when the case is clear, not when the case is marginal."
So why not trust parents with vouchers? If Utah soceity has decided that all income tax dollars will go to educate children, then why do we care where they are educated if we truly trust our parents?
Sorry for such a long posting...I'm done.
Best to all and all, no doubt, to come,
PTM
It's really interesting post.george.
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