Education in the United States
We have a thread devoted to academic freedom at universities, and we have a thread devoted to whether higher education should be subsidized. This thread is a landing spot for discussion of other issues related to education -- issues like school integration, pedagogy, the influence of politics on education (and vice versa), charter schools, public v. private schools, achievement gaps, and gerrymandering of school districts.
I'll start the discussion with two articles. The first deals with a major changes in the public school system in NYC.
NYC's public schools are highly segregated for such a diverse city. Last Friday, Bill DeBlasio announced the following:
Middle schools will see the most significant policy revisions. The city will eliminate all admissions screening for the schools for at least one year, the mayor said. About 200 middle schools — 40 percent of the total — use metrics like grades, attendance and test scores to determine which students should be admitted. Now those schools will use a random lottery to admit students.
In doing this, Mr. de Blasio is essentially piloting an experiment that, if deemed successful, could permanently end the city’s academically selective middle schools, which tend to be much whiter than the district overall.
DeBlasio also announced that:
New York will also eliminate a policy that allowed some high schools to give students who live nearby first dibs at spots — even though all seats are supposed to be available to all students, regardless of where they reside.
The system of citywide choice was implemented by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2004 as part of an attempt to democratize high school admissions. But Mr. Bloomberg exempted some schools, and even entire districts, from the policy, and Mr. de Blasio did not end those carve outs.
The most conspicuous example is Manhattan’s District 2, one of the whitest and wealthiest of the city’s 32 local school districts. Students who live in that district, which includes the Upper East Side and the West Village, get priority for seats in some of the district’s high schools, which are among the highest-performing schools in the city.
No other district in the city has as many high schools — six — set aside for local, high-performing students.
Many of those high schools fill nearly all of their seats with students from District 2 neighborhoods before even considering qualified students from elsewhere. As a result, some schools, like Eleanor Roosevelt High School on the Upper East Side, are among the whitest high schools in all of New York City.
Here is the New York Times article that describes the changes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/nyreg...
Obvious questions for discussion include:
- How large a priority should cities place on ensuring that city schools are representative of the city as a whole?
- Are measures like the ones that DeBlasio is implementing likely to be effective in making schools more representative?
- Will these measures have unintended (or intended) consequences that extend far beyond changing the representativeness of city schools?
Or it could be that you define everything in politics you don't like as "leftism" or "Marxism". That is your prerogative, bit it renders the terms meaningless when it comes to any discussions with you.
man if you follow continental European politics, what the media and leftists call "far right parties" are denouncing what I listed (and a lot more) and campaigning against the regulatory rape leftists have enacted for years in Europe, the above is just leftism, uncontroversially.
and the "far right" is polling decently (we vote in June).
man if you follow continental European politics, what the media and leftists call "far right parties" are denouncing what I listed (and a lot more) and campaigning against the regulatory rape leftists have enacted for years in Europe, the above is just leftism, uncontroversially.
and the "far right" is polling decently (we vote in June).
Far right parties denounce pretty much everything, that's why they're called "reactionaries". In general, criticising things other people do to try and make the world a better place is far easier than doing those things yourself. The progress of human kind throughout history certainly can't be traced to those who wanted to maintain the status quo.
because it was the green (actual Marxist party) request and main policy for decades, greens had a huge and growing support politically, and the "genius" nuanced Merkel wanted to strip the main policy from her adversaries and make it her own trying to cement her political support.
and because leftists are actually psychotic irrational people with fully incoherent desires, they want to "fight climate change" but "nuclear isn't actually clean" because of nuclear waste and because the USSR ****ed up a nuclear plant in Ukraine 40 years ago or something
Far right parties denounce pretty much everything, that's why they're called "reactionaries". In general, criticising things other people do to try and make the world a better place is far easier than doing things yourself.
well given in the vast majority of cases doing absolutely nothing is by far the best thing the government can do...the idea itself of government as a tool to use violently to meld the world into a "better place" is the source of the worst man made disasters of the last couple of centuries.
the progress of humankind can be fully traced to technological progress alone, with political power often being something that delayed, ruined or otherwise interfered negatively with quality of life improvements
because it was the green (actual Marxist party) request and main policy for decades, greens had a huge and growing support politically, and the "genius" nuanced Merkel wanted to strip the main policy from her adversaries and make it her own trying to cement her political support.
and because leftists are actually psychotic irrational people with fully incoherent desires, they want to "fight climate change" but "nuclear isn't actually clean" because of nuclear waste and because the USSR ****ed up
Well, I would think the problem of nuclear waste has to be addressed, yes. Chernobyl was obviously an outlier for a number of reasons, so I agree that shouldn't be an argument against nuclear power.
the progress of humankind can be fully traced to technological progress alone, with political power often being something that delayed, ruined or otherwise interfered negatively with quality of life improvements
Right, because historically, political power was vested in those who wanted to maintain the status quo, like monarchs, religious leaders, and the like. Basically the historical equivalent of modern reactionaries/conservatives.
I am not but lately some people who think not so differently from me are. Like Milei in Argentina.
the tide is slowly changing, we had a Bolsonaro, we have a Bukele, we have Wilders in the Netherlands, and the first woman prime minister in Italy heads the first actual right-wing Italian government since the 60s.
your "nuanced" technocratic center left actual hell scape is pissing off enough people around the world, even while guys like you control most of the media, that we are saying "**** It, &
Bobo is correct.
Your views on politics, and especially the post above, are what I would expect to hear from a reasonably intelligent, somewhat egotistical, conservative-leaning 13 year-old kid.
Bobo is correct.
Your views on politics, and especially the post above, are what I would expect to hear from a reasonably intelligent, somewhat egotistical, conservative-leaning 13 year-old kid.
yes rococo I understand that's what you think.
that's the normal position for people who believe "experts" should decide everything
There is a chasm between wanting big government, which I don't, and not wanting any government, which I do.
vast majority doesn't mean ever.
i am not an anarchist, but government role has to be very limited at the "if we don't act here people kill each other's in the streets" or comparable level of threat. if a society exists which is decent without regulation x, regulation x should be unconstitutional.
you should never even think of limiting any freedom of citizens if you aren't willing to bet your actual life on the absolute indispensability of doing it (like if you are wrong, you get killed because of it).
and the threshold to pass any freedom limitation should be absurdly high, akin to what is now needed for a constitutional amendment.
yes the above means that for any increase in taxes, any new line of regulation about anything, you would need a vast majority of the population in favour
And do you think that society would have made as much progress as it has if your stipulations had always been adhered to (proponents of the changes you describe have to put their life on the line, and pretty minor changes have to have the vast majority of the population in favour)?
because it was the green (actual Marxist party) request and main policy for decades, greens had a huge and growing support politically, and the "genius" nuanced Merkel wanted to strip the main policy from her adversaries and make it her own trying to cement her political support.
and because leftists are actually psychotic irrational people with fully incoherent desires, they want to "fight climate change" but "nuclear isn't actually clean" because of nuclear waste and because the USSR ****ed up
Seem Japan isn’t on planet earth .
Climate changes is leftish not scientific .
everything Lucian do not agree with is a lie or lunatic narrative .
Amazing the majority of Human are totally ignorant of that .
And do you think that society would have made as much progress as it has if your stipulations had always been adhered to (proponents of the changes you describe have to put their life on the line, and pretty minor changes have to have the vast majority of the population in favour)?
changes can happen without state violence ffs. I was talking about limitations to state violence.
you can change toward electric cars without a majority, if you don't need state violence to force it (just a random example). we didn't need state violence to start using PCs at home and later smartphones.
changes can happen without state violence ffs. I was talking about limitations to state violence.
you can change toward electric cars without a majority, if you don't need state violence to force it (just a random example). we didn't need state violence to start using PCs at home and later smartphones.
What do you mean by state violence? Like passing laws that are enforced by the police? That's kinda how laws work, otherwise they would be recommendations, not laws.
Lol, you put "experts" in quotes like they are mythical beings or something. You realise that experts exist, right?
in some topics more than in others.
in many social sciences no "expert" exists to refer to and delegate choices.
In bridge building they exist and, guess what, you don't have too much of a political quarrel about who to ask to build bridges.
but for too many topics of political interest, there is no objective expertise, because social sciences aren't actual sciences
yes rococo I understand that's what you think.
that's the normal position for people who believe "experts" should decide everything
FWIW experts shouldn’t decide policies but experts should be used as starting base for those tho .
ignoring experts and called them all liars just because u don’t like the anwers…
Your stance on climate changes, vaccines, covid ,etc do exactly that.
Ps: Covid, vaccine, climate changes aren’t social science and yet again …..
in some topics more than in others.
in many social sciences no "expert" exists to refer to and delegate choices.
In bridge building they exist and, guess what, you don't have too much of a political quarrel about who to ask to build bridges.
but for too many topics of political interest, there is no objective expertise, because social sciences aren't actual sciences
Just because you can't be 100% sure that one answer is correct, doesn't mean that all possible answers are equally incorrect. An inexact "science" such as economics, or your favourite, epidemiology, can still have theories that are more likely to be correct than others, and can rule out some theories entirely. Just like poker, where in a given spot you might not be sure what % of the time to call and what % of the time to raise, but you can be pretty confident that folding the nuts on the river is always wrong.
What do you mean by state violence? Like passing laws that are enforced by the police? That's kinda how laws work, otherwise they would be recommendations, not laws.
yes, using the monopoly of force to obligate others who disagree with you to act the way you want.
laws should only exist when overwhelming majorities of the population think it's absolutely obvious that thing should be regulated in that way. and that support should be checked every once in a while (mandatory sunset clauses for all laws).
if , when you ask the vast majority of people, they don't all say "lol obviously this has to be regulated in that way, the **** you talking about", then something shouldn't be regulated in that way.
and when you do any job, the median IQ person in society should easily know ALL rules that apply to that job. The idea of needing lawyers to do your job implies too many rules exist for your job.
the totality of the rules to run a restaurant should be read in a day or day by a slow person, be easily memorized, and easily understood by a median IQ person. totality including everything from appliances to trash to work contract and so on. AT MOST
the idea of laws passing with simple majorities is insane. the idea of having literally millions of pages of rules in insane.
yes, using the monopoly of force to obligate others who disagree with you to act the way you want.
laws should only exist when overwhelming majorities of the population think it's absolutely obvious that thing should be regulated in that way. and that support should be checked every once in a while (mandatory sunset clauses for all laws).
if , when you ask the vast majority of people, they don't all say "lol obviously this has to be regulated in that way, the **** you talking about", then somethin
Speaking of insanity, the idea of vesting the power to veto any possible law in the majority of people, who are on average of average intelligence, is insane to me.
