davis_square | Single issue voter

Public schools CAN be good. Mine was. They do need public support and community engagement to be good, though. And money. Those things are harder to find in cities than in suburbs, yeah, but I don't think giving up altogether on the idea of public education is a good one. I think it's possible to improve the bad ones.

lol. Yeah, let's burn more money at the altar of public school instead of privatizing and doing it smart.

Would this be like, err....School vouchers?

Federal mandate requiring schooling (promoting general welfare). Federal mandate outlining basic curriculum, so we don't wind up with "the earth is 6,000 years old" high school graduates. Extremely affordable loans, custom tailored to every parent who has a child to send to school. Not a penny due until said child turns 18 or 22. No one, no matter how poor, would be denied an education loan. The best part is, parents don't get to be lazy and just throw their kids in public school like crackers in soup. They'd have to direct their attention, be good parents and choose the school they like best based on teaching method and a whole host of other variables.

That way, people who choose to have kids can pay for their own kids, and not ask me to do it!

So what happens to the kids if the parents are lazy?

What do you mean?

Your model gives the parents a certain onus of responsibility for seeing to it that their children are properly educated. What sort of education would the kids in your system end up with if their parents are both, say, alcoholic drug addicts that are totally unavailable to their children to do anything?

The children having a strong education is the important part. In this scenario, presumably foster care would take care of the child, place them in an appropriate school, assume the cost of education and put the parents in jail.

Okay different scenario:

Suppose the parents aren't *so* bad that the kids are taken into foster care, but the "parents" is actually a single mom working two jobs with little to no education of her own and lacking the time/energy/willpower/know-how to be an effective educational advocate for her child. Then what sort of education does the kid get?

Also, why is it preferable to have everyone saddled with debt by the time they turn 18 instead of paying for this with taxpayer money? One of the major critiques I've often heard about the whole process of giving student loans instead of free education is that it discourages people from pursuing degrees with low starting salaries (which is most of them, actually) or from taking jobs that don't pay well (which, again, is most of them).

but the "parents" is actually a single mom working two jobs with little to no education of her own and lacking the time/energy/willpower/know-how to be an effective educational advocate for her child.

I could think of several options. Tax credits for single parents, extensions on the educational loans.

Also, why is it preferable to have everyone saddled with debt by the time they turn 18 instead of paying for this with taxpayer money?

The onus of the loan is on the parents, not the child.

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m00n.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:22 (UTC) - Expand

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:25 (UTC) - Expand

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m00n.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:31 (UTC) - Expand

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:33 (UTC) - Expand

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m00n.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:36 (UTC) - Expand

You have an overly optimistic view of foster care.

I'd put some of that bloat taxpayers are spending for public schools into things that help people who didn't make a bad choice, such as the children themselves (foster care).

Edited 2008-09-16 13:35 (UTC)

Or they might just end up picking the cheapest school and dumping their kids in it, or dumping them in any school and then defaulting on the loans.

Or they might just end up picking the cheapest school and dumping their kids in it

Sort of like how they do it now...

and then defaulting on the loans.

And their credit scores will suffer.

So, if the end result with the bad parents is the same as it is now except with worse credit scores, how do their kids end up better?

There will always be worst case scenarios. I think it would improve education levels overall, and more importantly, spare me taxes I have no vested interest in paying.

because privatizing the regulation of an industry worked wonders for mortgages and banking.

And energy.

Because the federal reserve didn't cause the great depression...

Because it functioned as a real reserve bank, right?
It maintained enough funds on hand to cover all the claims that could be made on it, in gold?

Wait, are you asking or claiming?

asking.

basically we can go back and forth on this all day showing how regulation worked or failed.

The most recent examples show that it mostly works.

I'm for free health care, and basically any service that addresses a need that we have no choice about. People choose to have kids, they don't choose to inherit a disease.

ah, I see your point.

I disagree with it, as society would collapse without more people being born.

You're not of the opinion that we're significantly overpopulated?

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pierceheart.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:29 (UTC) - Expand

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two-stabs.livejournal.com - 2008-09-15 20:29 (UTC) - Expand