Single issue voter

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

Hello,

Can someone tell me who caters least to families, children, and "no turn between 7-9 a.m." signs in the upcoming election?

Thanks!

Comments

Re: ;-)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

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?

Re: ;-)

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: ;-)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

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).

Re: ;-)

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: ;-)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

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

I think you're missing my point. There are plenty of parents out there that are simply never going to be good advocates for their own children. In fact a lot of people who have studied the problems with inner city education say that lack of parental advocacy is the *main* reason that these children do not do as well as their peers in better neighborhoods. What I'm trying to figure out is how your system would deal with the children of parents who are essentially absent from the educational process.

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

A big part of the reason we are willing to lend money to kids going to school is that we believe that giving them an education will shift their own income bracket enough that they could conceivably afford to pay off a loan while also enjoying a higher standard of living. Otherwise the lack of credit history and collateral would make such a loan untenable. In other words: what about the parents that should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to borrow money? Either because they are already in debt up to their eyeballs, or have never made a loan payment in their life (but not for lack of borrowing), or both.

Re: ;-)

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

Eric, I don't believe in legislating to address the lowest common denominator of society. If every anecdote inspired a law we'd be fucked. Obviously some people would struggle under a system like I described. I, and others, struggle under the one we use currently. Nothing's a perfect solution.

Re: ;-)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I think you underestimate the scope of the problem. That "lowest common denominator" of society represents a substantial chunk of the people in our prisons and public housing projects at the moment, and the problem is currently getting worse rather than better. The main purpose of public school, in my opinion, is to allow children to gain advantage where their parents had none, so that they can "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" so to speak. The rest of us already have the means to borrow money to go to private schools if we want to do that (although I would argue that our general population already has more debt than we can handle, so adding even more would do more harm than good).

Re: ;-)

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

Let's agree to disagree. I think privatized schooling would be higher quality due to competition between schools and more (much more) centralized and focused administration.

Re: ;-)

[m00n.livejournal.com]

The problem is as much with the structure as it is with the mindset of said administration. We very nearly ended up with an entire national education system that believed the world is only 6,000 years old. If that had happened, I would have been hard pressed to say that we were better off because our entire country's curriculum was decided by one centralized and focused administration.

Re: ;-)

[on-reserve.livejournal.com]

You have an overly optimistic view of foster care.

Re: ;-)

[two-stabs.livejournal.com]

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).