41 thoughts on “Education”

  1. “If we substitute the word “education” for “religion”

    Aside from the fact that education is not religion.

    Religion is an organized set of beliefs.

    Education is a form of learning and processes.

    because of that difference, the founders worked hard to create universal public schools through the northwest ordinances, the land grant system and painful as it may be to you, taxation.

    BTW, the author of your piece, is wrong. The Supreme Court has ruled that parents have a fundamental
    right in how they educate their children. It’s why we have religious schools, home schools and free private schools.

    1. [Everything] is corrupted by government interference or control.

      Saying that religion and education are different doesn’t address the political realities.

      The Supreme Court has ruled that parents have a fundamental right in how they educate their children.

      The author never said they didn’t. You have a reading comprehension problem. What he did say is that parents are compelled to send children to school and pay for school even if they don’t.

      It is fundamentally immoral to tax anybody for something they don’t want to pay for. It has a simple name, theft. Even defense could be funded voluntarily. The free rider problem is one that could be addressed if we had the clarity to focus on separate issues.

      1. “It is fundamentally immoral to tax anybody for something they don’t want to pay for. ”

        you seem to utterly misunderstand the differences between taxes and purchases.

        but, If you want to make it a choice, I don’t want to pay taxes for the Bush Invasion of Iraq.

        1. you seem to utterly misunderstand the differences between taxes and purchases.

          Um, no.

          I don’t want to pay taxes for the Bush Invasion of Iraq.

          Now that’s an intelligent comment, unlike your others. I happen to believe Bush took too long to invade Iraq since Saddam gave him good reason to do so for years. So what should be done when the government uses money taken from you for things you don’t approve of?

          1. “Now that’s an intelligent comment, unlike your others. I happen to believe Bush took too long to invade Iraq since Saddam gave him good reason to do so for years. So what should be done when the government uses money taken from you for things you don’t approve of?”

            Excercise my first amendment rights, participate in the political process, vote, organize. Daydream about life in Australia, which has universal healthcare,
            and a very low gun crime rate.

          2. Not bad, however you left out one thing… make sure of the important things and hold fast to that which is fine. In other words, always examine and meditate on your own beliefs first. Then you can take those actions.

    2. Aside from the fact that education is not religion.

      Religion is an organized set of beliefs.

      Education is a form of learning and processes.

      You seriously cannot believe this. Have you been around a school recently? Have you not paid attention to the news? Every commenter on this website can send a link or two showing just how moronic that statement is. Yet they shouldn’t, because it’s so obvious a sixth grader could understand it.

      Of course the modern educational society has a religion. One name (out of many) is the Cult of Social Justice.

      1. funny, I seem to recall Algebra and english and chemistry when i was in 9th grade.
        I don’t recall a class in social justice.

        1. You haven’t read many math, english or chemistry books lately have you? Hint: look into story problems.

        2. “I don’t recall a class in social justice.”

          You mean you took a history class that taught something other than <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_historyWhig history? Pray, tell us, when and where? I don’t believe it.

  2. The author of the piece seems to get carried away. It makes as much sense to me as if someone would say, we have a fundamental right to do business, therefore we should repeal all government regulation of businesses including local zoning laws.

    Most of us try to be a little more nuanced. It makes no sense for the US Federal Government to be administering local schools (unless you think that all those rural redneck hicks should have their kids taken away from them for their own good), so the Department of Education should be pretty much abolished. Jesse Unruh in my birth state of California ruined the local schools, so we should give control back to the local school districts. If the people in the local district would rather home-school their kids or use Khan Academy than set up local schools, they should be able to do that. etc.

  3. Rand – this article has to be the stupidest and most historically-illiterate article you’ve linked to. James Madison, cited in your article, explicitly argued in favor of public education. Money quote from the linked article: it is better for the poorer classes to have the aid of the richer by a general tax on property, than that every parent should provide at his own expence for the education of his children,

    Perhaps Mr. C. Bradley Thompson should go back to school.

    1. Another reading comprehension problem. So what if Madison argued for tax paid education? That has absolutely nothing to do with the premise of the article which is that education is like religion in that those three points apply to either and in a free society, theft by taxation and corruption by government should be limited or eliminated if possible.

      1. The reading comprehension (and lack-of-reading failure) is Thompson’s. He doesn’t comprehend the difference between religion and education and he failed to read enough of Madison’s writing to know what Madison’s actual opinion on the subject was.

        Considering Madison’s “quote” forms the basis for the first two paragraphs and Madison’s logic on religion is used as the basis for the whole thing, Madison’s actual opinions on public education are highly relevant.

        1. Stuck on argument by authority are you? The authors point stands by itself.

          He wasn’t saying that Madison was making his point. He was making his point.

          Madison’s position on education are simply another view. It doesn’t make them relevant to his point… unless you keep insisting on argument by authority.

          1. Ken Anthony – my original point was that the Thompson is (very ignorantly) distorting Madison’s words to argue the exact opposite of what Madison very explicitly said, and that Rand was (very ignorantly) making an approving link to it. It’s like using something Rand said to support communism – insulting and betraying a fundamental ignorance about the subject matter.

            I didn’t actually comment on the substance of the article. I will now. As DN-Guy said, religion isn’t the same as education, and (again, as anybody with any historical education would know) Madison knew the difference between the two. Taxation is not theft, never has been – taxation is what we pay for government, and government is what prevents anarchy in the streets.

            As MikeR said, even if you don’t like Federal “control” of education, deciding that all public education should be abolished is very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

          2. Ken Anthony – and since you’re confused, let me un-confuse you:

            Argument from authority = “X said Y so therefore Y is correct.”

            Historical ignorance = “X said Y about A. If you take what X said about A and apply to B, you get C,” while ignoring the fact that X explicitly spoke about B and said the exact opposite of C.

          3. Uh, nope. Deciding not to include all of Madison’s writings that do not support the point Mr. Thompson is making does not constitute “Historical Ignorance”.

            Ken has you pegged.

    2. “this article has to be the stupidest and most historically-illiterate article you’ve linked ”

      I don’t know, chris. Rand links to lots of stupid and illiterate things.

    3. Perhaps Mr. C. Bradley Thompson should go back to school.

      Did you learn that about Madison in school? I sure didn’t. I learned that he was one of those old white guys that was president and wrote the Constitution, probably owned slaves, and thought black people were only 3/5ths a white person. Oh, and the defending the brits who massacred some protesters bit. His philosophical thoughts on education were never part of it.

      I had American history in a public school. Maybe you learned it a voluntary one? Private school or (also non-compulsory) university? Which school does Mr. Thompson need to go back to? It certainly wasn’t mine. Tell me this government school in which the philosophical thoughts of Madison on the topic of public education were covered with such impact as to leave a lasting impression on your mind.

      By the way, don’t harbor any illusion that you’re fooling anyone that you have a comprehensive grasp of what Madison’s opinion was on any given subject (which you seem to think a requirement before using any of his words for any argument), rather than that you immediately bit on the first non-sequitur (as Ken noted) you could think to use to ‘discredit’ Mr. Thompson after the first few lines of the article you read and pounded “James Madison public education” into a Google search as fast as you could peck it out.

  4. One of the problems with this entire approach is that it would end up being abused. We all know that there is a fairly small minority of people in the USA (and an even smaller, but still existent, minority in the UK, incidentally) who would use such freedom to stuff their children’s heads with Bronze Age myth instead of education. Unfortunately, the people most affected by that – the children – wouldn’t get a say in whether their intellectual development gets crippled or not.

    There are also those who would use such freedom to instil Dark Ages Arabic tribal mores into their kids.

    1. While that is certainly true Fletcher, diversity of thought is better than monolithic thought because of systemic dangers. Child abuse can still be addressed.

    2. Or digital age myths such as anthropocentric global warming.

      Why can’t we just let people educate their own children the way they want? This fear on the left (and on the right) that some will be mis-educated is simply a totalitarian fear that someone, somewhere will ultimately be an ideological threat to the left’s cultural hegemony.

      1. Well, you can in fact home-school your kids.

        To Fletcher’s point, an example of letting people educate their kids as they see fit is the Taliban. They send their kids to madrassas, where the only learning is memorizing the Koran. It seems to have done wonders for Afghanistan! /sarcasm/

        There really are objective facts in the world, and kids eventually become adults. If we don’t want them to be a burden on society, we need to provide the kids the tools to function in a modern society.

        1. Interesting how this argument is pushed towards the religion is evil category. I had pointed out that global warming is a myth, yet that is conveniently ignored. There really are objective facts in this world, unfortunately they disagree with AGW. I should also point out that the USSR and Chinese state-run schools have done wonders for those countries! /sarcasm/

          With regards to your second point, if we want to give them tools, why are we shoving propaganda down their throats instead of teaching them important things like reading, writing, math and science? Teaching social justice in schools instead of STEM will certainly make our kids a burden on society. But that doesn’t matter, because it is anti-religion.

          1. what you call a myth appears to be substantiated by
            most scientists working in meteorology, climate science
            and geology.

        2. “To Fletcher’s point, an example of letting people educate their kids as they see fit is the Taliban”

          Uhh so home schoolers are the Taliban? Lets dial that down a little bit there. Democrats wont even call Tailiban terrorists but they have no problems labeling home schoolers as the Taliban.

          And who cares if Muslims have their own schools in the USA? As long as they are not teaching kids to pick up the black flag of AQ and kill all the infidels, I could care less what their religious beliefs are.

    3. “We all know that there is a fairly small minority of people in the USA (and an even smaller, but still existent, minority in the UK, incidentally) who would use such freedom to stuff their children’s heads with Bronze Age myth”

      Who cares. People have the right to think what they want in this country and the federal government shouldn’t be indoctrinating them in the political ideology of the Democrat party. We need less kids singing creepy Obama cult songs in schools.

      1. Who cares. People have the right to think what they want in this country and the state government shouldn’t be indoctrinating them in the religious ideology of the fundamentalist Right. We need less kids singing creepy religious songs in schools.

        Sounds better to you this way perhaps? Or maybe not.

  5. The basic logic of taxpayer funding for education – and many other things – is:

    1) You benefit from educated children; and because of that
    2) You should contribute to educating children; and if you don’t
    3) We’ll force you.

    The first claim is typically made without evidence, or with one-sided evidence. While you could make an anecdotal argument that everyone benefits from widespread education, anecdotely “uneducated” people have value too, and mis-educated people can have negative value.

    There’s variations on this argument, like that leftist favorite:

    1) An educated populous is necessary for the well functioning of a democracy

    This is just a more specific variation on the original argument.. but comes with the burden to show that a democracy is beneficial – it isn’t.

    1. An educated populous is necessary for the well functioning of a democracy

      Which is precisely why the left do their best to ensure schools provide a lot of indoctrination and very little education.

      The whole idea that kids should spend the best part of the first twenty to twenty-five years of their lives sitting in a room being told what to do by left-wing union workers is simply laughable in an era where almost anything they could want to learn is available to them easily over the Internet or from a good library.

    2. well trent, why don’t you try spreading the wit and wisdom of trent waddington to a
      group of illiterates.

    3. Every form of government has it’s flaws. It’s amazing that people are often unwilling to see them.

      Look up necessary evil and you should find government.

  6. Taxation is not theft, never has been – taxation is what we pay for government, and government is what prevents anarchy in the streets.

    Non-sequitur, “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” it doesn’t say anything about anarchy. What it says is that rights exist before government exist and the purpose of government is to protect or secure these rights. Protecting individual rights is actually the opposite of preventing people from exercising their own choices (what you might define as anarchy.)

    Theft is taking another person’s property without consent. Our founders were wrong to say government is by consent of the governed since that’s impossible. So nobody ever told you the story of Robin Hood as a child? Taxation is always theft. But when enough people say it’s ok because we need to fund government those that do not consent are forced to go along.

    Taxation is always theft but there’s a different between little taxation and massive taxation. Even you might consider 100% taxation to be theft.

    distorting Madison’s words

    Quoting Madison is a strange way of distorting. All he did was say suppose. Suppose we substitute this work for that. Does the argument after the substitution make any sense? Then he argues that it does.

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