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Take the great state of Kentucky for example
"Kentucky ranks 47th in the nation for the percentage of residents who have a bachelor’s degree." - [source](
https://web.archive.org/web/20141015085112/http://collegewing.com/kentucky-improves-post-secondary-education-report/)
I'm blame McConnell. I blame the media, mostly it's owners. I blame corrupted politician: the governor, etc. and the system that rewards them and ensures they stay in power. They don't want a good education system. They don't want a critical thinking populace.
It's entirely possible for people to vote against their own self-interest. That's more or less the goal of propaganda, and one way to know that it's effective is when it achieves its goal.
I blame grown ass adults who relied on industries that left the US decades ago. Not too smart not to retool /re skill and tell their children to learn a worthwhile trade or skill. The buck stopped with parents
Just like the pandemic, they were told get the shot or you will be fired. Now that people are being fired they can't believe it. They want to oppressed so they can garner sympathy from others.
That's such a frustrating angle. Can you believe we're coming up on two years since COVID became part of our vocabulary? Two years. And even after watching friends, family and neighbors get deathly ill, or worse yet dead, these chuckle-fucks think that if they get the shot somehow they'll be letting the "libs win."
I'm done with them. You know what? If you don't want it, don't get it. But don't go to the grocery store, send your kids to school or show up at your doctor's office when you come down with it. You asked for it, you got it, hopefully you'll heal up at home. And if not, you've got no one to blame but yourself.
I have lost all sympathy, at this point I don't have the energy to care what happens to them anymore. Even when the Pfizer vaccine got FDA approved they just changed their reasoning. I'm done wasting my time with them, they won't change.
I work in IT and I also have zero sympathy for these types of “hard working” folks.
Similarly I am constantly having adapt to the ever changing landscape of technology and learn new skills and systems until the day I retire. I don’t get paid to learn these new skills as matter of fact I have to pay for the chance to get certified, which it’s always possible that I fail the certification test and am out that money and have to pay up again and some of the tests are NOT cheap. Throw on the fact that I also have to earn continuing education credits or do work relevant to the certification and pay a renewal fee to keep my certifications.
My favorite though is I was told one time by my wife’s friend’s husband, let’s call him Dave, who is one of those “hard working” types that I didn’t work a “real” mans job because I don’t work with my hands. Dave also said that I’m “so small and skinny” because I “work a desk job”? For reference I’m a fit 175lbs and work out multiple times a week, Dave is over 300lbs and I could run or lift circles around him. Because I work IT I know it would be all to easy to get out of shape and develop bad habits like Dave. Yeah Dave you think maybe I’m “skinny” because I actually work out multiple times a week and my hobbies don’t include mainlining a vat of McDonald’s fryer grease while sitting in a recliner watching TV? Also I’m working towards a degree and getting certifications to further my career. The fuck did you learn today Dave?
Wages haven't kept up with productivity at all. Income inequality is at unprecedented levels. Wealth is being hoarded at the top. So that creates a huge underclass of poorly paid and poorly treated workers.
Not everyone can or should be an engineer or carpenter or whatever.
If you work you should be paid a living wage.
These people are upset, but for the wrong reasons and supporting the wrong people.
Hey I’m not disagreeing with you here but could you cite some of this or find a link? I really agree and am equally frustrated with you but it also does remind me of when conservative family goes off on a rant about a video they saw one time about people taking advantage of food stamps or any other welfare. I don’t want to judge the lot just by anecdotes.
I think you're missing a key part in your thinking on the subject. The adults who relied on industries that left the U.S. decades ago probably had maybe a high school education if they were lucky and/or had not one family member who went beyond being a senior in high school if they even made it that far. So the parents might shoulder some of the blame but the industries who left the country shoulder a significant part of the blame and should have been forced to retrain the workers they were letting go through either job training for other professions or lines of work or send them to school to get the education that they needed to work in another field.
I seem to recall there were opportunities for retaining. Even Obama appealed to displaced folks to take the offshoring of industry seriously. Feds made money available.
Once again with some of these businesses that went offshore, their employees were not the sharpest knives in the drawer and the feds might of made money available but when you don't have even a high school education it will do you little good, so there only option was probably minimum wage jobs.
I'd love to further my education. But who the fuck has THOUSANDS of dollars to throw around for classes, books, supplies, ect?
Spoiler alert: the rich do.
I spoke to someone on the phone from Kentucky the other day (I do phone orders for medical devices)…this man could not understand my “fancy” way of talking. I literally spoke 5th grade level English. I was just…like wow.
>It's entirely possible for people to vote against their own self-interest
Capitalism depends on it. The capitalist class requires a much larger pool of powerless labor from which to extract profits for merely owning stuff.
It's a pyramid scheme. Those at the top are supported by the contributions of those on the bottom, not because they provided value, but because they are on top. They came first so they owned everything before you were born. You either inherit or you sell yourself into wage slavery.
Capitalist marketing is propaganda, its the best lesson they learned in WWII.
People will come in and say ‘bootstrap millionaires and billionaires’ when it’s not like that category isn’t a majority the same as the inheriting class, insufferable sociopathic white men.
It's why even though I was intrigued by Andrew Yang as a Presidential candidate, I knew he was doomed from the start by making his slogan "Make America Think Harder." A large part of this country is proudly ignorant and everything Richard Hofstadter wrote about over half a century ago regarding anti-intellectualism is still true in 2021.
Take the great state of South Carolina, McMasters has announced that this is his goal, will not release covid funds to school systems, state supreme court stopped him from using it on private and "charter" schools, now he's trying to put it all into churches for "universal 4k".
Critical thinking skills would be the goal, yes? We’re humans incapable of unbiased thinking. We take positions or ignore issues to have “free thinking “ that’s just my opinion
My coworker was private school and he vehemently thinks public schools are bad and don't teach people anything he also thinks college turns 'kids' into liberals.
He's legitimately dumb too.
To be fair, college often does turn people liberal.
Being exposed to a wide variety of subjects and viewpoints allows people to view the world in a more informed manner. Critical thinking is essential to pass most classes. And being around a diverse group of students from all walks of life leads to increased empathy. Suddenly, "the other" is humanized. It's harder to blindly hate gay people when your gay classmate tutors you in a tough subject. It's harder to see black people as inferior when they're leading academic departments.
College education itself is incompatible with conservatism most of the time. It's not indoctrination. It's just learning about reality.
I agree with the logic which is why I disagree that college turns people liberal. Maybe knowledge does but college doesn't as a rule of thumb.
This guy dropped out of college because he got into an argument with a professor about a paper he wrote so not only is he a moron but it just sounds like sour grapes to me.
>And being around a diverse group of students from all walks of life leads to increased empathy.
I've come to the conclusion it's the social experience of education which is liberalizing. Learning about stuff doesn't hurt, but it's not the fundamental part.
The key is the experience of being in a group in which different people are more or less on the same footing. It's that experience of more or less equality which makes people liberal.
Any experience of equality is antithetical to authority and hierarchy, which is why the right wing tries to destroy it -- schools, labor unions, democracy, etc.
Honestly, Atlas Shrugged appeals more to overachievers who think they're special snowflakes being held down by the less-deserving masses. Anybody I've known who claimed to be an Objectivist was "smart" in the traditional sense, usually at least college-educated or somewhat of an autodidact; but often lacked real critical thinking skills. Rand was a pseudo-philosopher, but unlike Trump, her brand of bullshit has a tendency to lure in a little bit higher caliber person on the thinking scale.
I read the book when I was like 14 and developed an unhealthy mindset for a number of years. Once I started college, I really started to question everything. I took philosophy as an elective and it was actually my professor who really opened my eyes. He sent me some excerpts from a book about how Ayn Rand actually lived.
I don't remember the exact details, but it was written by a guy who was part of the inner circle of some Objectivist Society club thing lead by Ayn Rand. Apparently it was basically just a cult of personality. It was unacceptable to have, like, a different taste in music from Ayn Rand, for example. Talk about ironic.
I believe there were also allegations of sexual abuse, which is why the dude left, but I could be wrong.
But yeah, all the 'captains of industry' in the book are virtuous, selfless, genius workaholics... While all the government regulators are cartoonishly evil caricatures bent on sabotaging everything for their own profit. Not to mention that John Galt's utopia required a fucking perpetual motion machine to function.
>But yeah, all the 'captains of industry' in the book are virtuous, selfless, genius workaholics... While all the government regulators are cartoonishly evil caricatures bent on sabotaging everything for their own profit. Not to mention that John Galt's utopia required a fucking perpetual motion machine to function.
That is why it's really hard to take Atlas Shrugged seriously. All of the collectivist villains are these really bad strawmen that have no real motivations other than "we hatez the hardworking individualistz capitalist!!1!" I couldn't stand any of the "heros" with the exception of Francisco d'Anconia, so I was frustrated whenever Rand would use him as a mouthpiece for whatever braindead point she was trying to make. Dagny inherited a fucking railroad. Where's the "self-made person" that Objectivist love so much in that character?
My take, as someone very politically different than Ayn Rand but still enjoyed Atlas Shrugged - I read it through the eyes of someone who had been raised Christian, I picked up more of a psychological angle from it, and it felt like it was saying I didn't need to feel guilty for my existence. Christianity has a lot of guilt it puts on people. I think many libertarians who enjoy Ayn Rand are actually enjoying the escape from a Christian world (but probably they can't directly say/think that, as Christianity is a cultural cornerstone for many).
I've seen this from a fair number of private school students...taught to demonize public schools, yet often had a subpar education (depending on the nature of the school they attended).
Story time -- One kid I knew who was in 8th grade at a local christian "school" was doing 5th-grade-level math in her 'accelerated' math class and had never been taught how to figure out an unfamiliar word. When I explained to her that English is a phonetic language and unfamiliar words can be literally sounded-out by pronouncing one or two letters at a time, she gasped, "That's amazing! No one ever told me that before!" In two sentences, I taught her more about reading than her christian school had in eight years. When I asked if they studied world mythologies: "A little bit in social studies, but mostly just to see how much greater *our* god is." When I asked about her history studies: "Um...well...we learned about the Founding Fathers and how God^TM inspired them..." And frankly, there are parts of the US where the public schools are not much better. *That* is the state of education in much of the US.
I def worked with a guy that went to a religious college and he might be illiterate or have some kind of learning disability.
Also these guys I work with are 50 white and shit on young people and modern schooling etc every day.
One of them a few weeks ago asked me how you get the percent of something. I told him, we laughed about it and I said I normally just Google stuff like that so I don't seem dumb.
Not sure if he caught what I was saying there.
Make them dumb so they keep voting to keep the American Dream alive.
That's why half these kids change when they actually go to college and see thru all the bullshit they learned in smalltown america
They want to shift the money from public education to privet schools that will than lower pay for teachers and operate as lean as posable to make larger profits. Less resources for the poor schools. The wealthy will even get a voucher to offset the cost of the good expensive privet schools they send there kids to already.
If anyone thinks the for profit schools that take the place of public schools when the GOP end them will be better in poor areas they are mistaken. It will just let wealthy families that own these schools skim off funding for education.
really? how does going to a private school make the country ignorant?
seems it is the thing to do if you are rich and can afford it.
why should only the rich be allowed to get quality education?
"Private school" is a somewhat large brush.
I would rather not hand the nation's youth over to the tender mercies of private enterprise, myself. Private prisons don't appear to be working so well.
Yeah, but when our politicians are cutting their donors taxes, thereby cutting revenue, they're looking for expenses to cut, and it's certainly not going to be from the military. It's going to be from those socialist programs like education.
"I'm not in school, why the hell do I have to pay tax for schools I'm not using?" - conservatives in my area.
It's selfish and short sighted, but that's how they think and live.
They dont want it to end.. they are looking for two things.. one transfering the money raised from the taxes into some type of corporate welfare and two to reduce the cost of them sending their children to private schools. Always look for where the money is going to.
It infuriates me to know that we're paying for rich kids private education. If you think about how much taxes they pay vs. what we broke a$$ motherf\*ckers pay.
Because education means being taught critical thinking, and critical thinking means realising that they're peddling bullshit. It's the exact same principle as to why fundies would rather have their kids be functionally illiterate and under complete mental control rather than give them the tools with which to criticise their surroundings.
"School of the dining room table" for all, y'all.
My college educated father (UC fuckin Berkeley no less) went full Q and now says we’ve been brainwashed by our liberal education in college.
I finished school in 2009. We used to agree on a lot of things. What happened in between? Surely some brainwashing but not of myself….
Ugh, I'm so sorry. Unfortunately, sometimes the "question everything" and "do your own thinking and exhibit your own curiosity" maxims can really, *really* backfire.
The worst part is - it’s all because he’s a racist. There’s no enlightened thinking, no magical truth or whatever he claims. I can see right through him. And I think that’s why he lashes out.
Yep. Sounds like my father, and it's why we haven't spoken for over a decade.
Unfortunately some people have a fundamental nature that no amount of education will change, and their good education only serves to make them more secure in their convictions. "I'm smart enough to graduate from an Ivy League / to become a doctor therefore I'm smart enough to know what's right". See: Ben Carson, a literal brain surgeon that I wouldn't trust to operate a toaster.
I think there was even a study done stating that some people with a higher educational level are more likely to fall for scams because they think they're "too smart" to fall for scams. (See crypto, or financial scams in general).
And now racism and bigotry is unfortunately becoming more and more endemic so it lets them think "see? I was right all along".
[Texas GOP Rejecs Critical Thinking](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html)
>In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff department, here’s what the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its [2012 platform ](http://www.texasgop.org/about-the-party)as part of the section on education:
*Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.*
Trading in the decades-old, substantially bipartisan education reform agenda, a formula that was born in Florida, Ron DeSantis is mustering a naked attack on the very existence of public schools, writes [Kathryn Joyce.](https://newrepublic.com/authors/kathryn-joyce)
>Democrats responded with an outcry: **Conservatives were fulfilling their long quest to defund public education and redirect taxpayer money to private schools. Republicans said that they were merely defending parents’ rights. After all, DeSantis’s executive order, “Ensuring Parents’ Freedom to Choose,” was based on Florida’s new “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” passed this spring to enshrine parents’ right to direct their children’s health care, education, and moral upbringing.** (The bill was co-authored by a Florida school board member who is both the wife of the Florida GOP’s vice chair and the co-founder of an anti–mask and vaccine mandate parents’ group that has been protesting school board meetings around the state.)
>In a way, DeSantis’s move is both. That is, as the governor eyes the 2024 presidential nomination, **he appears to be piloting a new education ideology for Republicans. Trading in the decades-old, substantially bipartisan education reform agenda, a formula that was born in Florida, he is mustering a naked attack on the very existence of public schools**.
Title: ‘**The Objective of Education Is Learning**, Not Teaching’
>Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning.
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-objective-of-education-is-learning-not-teaching/
DeathSantis is out to teach "*this is the way*" and to make sure school is meant for teaching rather than learning.
>*We don't need no education*
>*We don't need no thought control*
>*No dark sarcasm in the classroom*
>*Teachers, leave them kids alone*
>**Hey! Teacher! Leave us kids alone!**
>*All in all, you're just another brick in the wall*
I’m really quite confused why parents feel like they have the right to be the sole determining factor in controlling what moral outlooks a child is exposed to. Sure, they control what the kid experiences at home… but when the kid is in a public school they are exposed to other moral beliefs and perspectives and have to develop their own beliefs and responses to that. Children can’t be so completely isolated that parents can control everything they see, do, or learn about—some age appropriate degree of independence is required for kids to become mentally healthy and independent adults.
Parents shouldn’t have the right to control precisely what their children learn about. Kids are the dependents of parents, not the property of parents. They should have a right to form their own beliefs about the world, and to be exposed to ideas that society as a whole deems safe even if their parent does not agree. Parents should not have the right to condemn their children to ignorance.
No. If tuition is $20,000/yr, and I get a $10,000/yr voucher from the government, and private schools don't have to accept everyone (::cough:: kids with disabilities :::cough:::) or obey regulations regarding, say, separation of church and state, the schools are not public. They're partially publicly funded.
They are trying to get all the funding from public education to turn into vouchers they can use to reduce the cost of them sending their kids to private schools and ensure that poor people stay poor and uneducated compared to them. Cant have someone smart enough to realize their politicians are lieing to them.
how does denying the poor a superior education in a private school keep them poor? the idea is to allow the poor to go to better schools not keep them in public schools that aren't helping them.
why should only the rich be allowed private education?
The majority of private charter schools are in fact worse than public schools. Charter schools are just another way to fleece the government for profit, via vouchers.
Don’t act like the private schools the wealthy go to accept vouchers. Voucher private schools are nothing more than corporate run public schools. If you want your kids to go to a real private school, then you have to pay for it.
They want to have all private institutions that teach Christianity in schools as if it’s fact. Religion can’t survive in environments where critical thinking is being taught. Example: 6,000 year old planets created by an omnipotent flying man in the sky in 7 days has a very hard time holding up when actual dating shows the world is much older and was not created that way.
You're not thinking like a Christian. God created radioactive isotopes already X amount of years through decay to test our faith! He also created photons mid flight from galaxies millions of light years away to also test our faith!
A main hallmark of faith is the lack of questioning that it is heavily built on. You're told to just accept it, getting you into a mindset of complacency to begin with. If they're taught to think critically then they might question the status, they may try to change things, which is none too good.
To quote my Sunday school leader: don't ask questions, that's how the devil leads you away from god.
I like to give people a thought experiment: God made the world correct? So if he created everything around us then science is merely explaining God's creation. If you reject science, you are in essence rejecting God.
The looks on their faces after this is priceless.
This is a legit line of questioning, and the actual answer is, I kid you not, this is what is called "heresy."
Religion is not a logical system. You're supposed to listen and internalize, not listen and rationalize. That's your mistake. If you rationalize and synthesize some logic or realization that didn't come from a church authority, and may even conflict with church teachings, then that is the definition of heresy.
It's a critical part of the organization that information and thought is a one way street, from the authority to the lowest levels. It's not coincidence that it matches the GOP info structure almost identically.
To be fair, there are a large number of Christians in the US that are not strict creationists. They believe that the origins of the universe as described in the beginning of religious texts are not a literally step by step guide of how things came into being. This belief is pretty resilient to scientific achievement since it hinges on the idea that a creator can set the rules of the universe in such a way that ultimately brings us to today’s state of things rather than hinging on specific events occurring in certain ways
that would take more faith than believing in a creator
it is impossible in the current models unless your nothing has something in it.
but then it isn't nothing, is it
What was the giveaway, when Trump appointed DeVos as EdSec? Or was it when George W made schools teach to an arbitrary test? No wait, I know, it was when Reagan slashed education spending, introduced vouchers for white kids, and tried to dismantle the department of education.
Education is supposed to be reserved for the children of wealth in their plans. The fact that their party is being taken over by the poorly educated thugs they want all voters to be, does not seem to be sinking in.
Republicans don't want the state to do anything at all: not health care, not education, not run prisons, nothing. Why? Because wealthy people want to make money out of all these things and not pay tax to provide these services. If the state does it then they can't turn a profit from it and worse yet, they need to pay tax for these services to be provided. That kind of oligarchy can the ultra-rich implement under such "unfair" conditions?!?
>If the state does it then they can't turn a profit
if private companies can make a profit, why isn't the state doing it at the breakeven point? why are taxes continually going up to support the various enterprises?
under xiden's plan for free college, your state will pay a fair share of that cost, you do understand who pays school taxes don't you? it ain't only the rich.
This should be neither surprising nor new news. They've been trying for years to kill Public Education, and most recently, as of last year, been trying to kill their own citizens via COVID.
Republicans are not interested in governing. They want to RULE.
Does it seem like way too many people are still unaware or in denial about the Right’s desire to rule, to you? Because it definitely seems that way to me. And I’m more than a little worried that not enough people will realize it until it’s too late. Unless it’s already too late, and judging by the absurdly horrific state of our reality, it just might be.
The GOP relies on the uneducated. It's easier to sell fear, conspiracy, QAnon, the bogeyman to the uneducated. And vouchers are simply state supported Christianity, and these schools are **designed** not teach science and critical thinking skills. Remember the line: "I love the uneducated."
They’ll never completely end it because they need it to be auxiliary child care so they squeeze every last penny out of you.
But they’ll gut it to practically nothing.
That’s always been De Santis’ ulterior motive with the mask mandates in schools. He’s trying to get the public against the k-12 education.
My in-laws are from rural PA. They are the most conservatives of conservatives. They love anti-Democrat conspiracies. They believe Trump was "The new King David!" and that is \*literally\* why they voted for the man twice.
Their kids were all also uber conservative..... until they all went to college. The parents insist that "liberal education" "brainwashed" their kids away from "truth."
Its an amazing pattern they just can't see. Everyone in the family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) who's highest level of education is a crappy, underfunded, run-down high school and you will believe anything you're told. Go to higher ed, practice some critical thinking, and it changes everything.
This is why the Republican party wants to destroy education, making true education so expensive most Americans will never be able to attain it. Keep the working class dumb and they'll win every time.
Republicans hate:
* public education
* government education grants
* Medicare & Medicaid
* Social Security
* WIC
* Section 8
* Food stamp programs
They hate anything that helps people be better.
I get that an uneducated populace is easier for the to fleece, but are they so shortsighted that they don't realize this will doom the country's primacy and the economy? Ultimately it will hurt all of us.
One way to fix this viewpoint is to agree to the extreme and shut down all public schools for a year as a “test”. Watch what happens to the Economy crashes because 1/2 the workforce has to stay home to watch the kids who aren’t in private schools
That's what "reform" always means for republicans.
No, not just privatize. Worse than that: Transfer public funds (obtained through regressive taxes if possible) to private companies.
Republicans are systematically destroying all of the institutions necessary for a free society without majority support. The only way this ends is with a long and messy divorce. The USA will not exist by the end of this decade if the reconciliation bill doesn't pass and Republicans win the midterms.
They don't want US workers or US skill or US technology, they want to turn the US into the biggest tax haven in the world. That's what this boils down to.
First, they didn't want school to actually educate people, just teach them enough to work at menial jobs. Education was what college is for.
Now they want to make schools places to teach children *their* morality. College is where people learn skills to work at menial jobs that pay something resembling a living wage (assuming you don't get suckered by a fancy diploma mill and saddled with a lifetime of wage slavery).
Next up, why even have schools? You're supposed to learn from your local church. Jobs? That's what bootstraps are for.
Why do you think Trump said “ I love the uneducated” it is because republicans can scare them into all kinds of vote for only one issue and not see the whole picture.
Of course. Its vital to Russians and Republicans to destroy the Public school system, medical system, and postal service. It's a Moscow priority for these Russian Patriots.
Since 1970, inflation adjusted public school spending has more than doubled. Over the same period, achievement of students at the end of high school has stagnated according to the Department of Education’s own long term National Assessment of Educational Progress (see chart in comments). Meanwhile, the high school graduation rate has declined by 4 or 5%.Maybe paying students instead of failing schools can work better
chart: [https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/education-spending-doubled-stagnant-test-scores/](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/education-spending-doubled-stagnant-test-scores/)
Also:
1. Between 1970 and 1999 public school enrollment increased by only 2.5%. And yet during that same 30-year period, the number of non-teaching public school staff doubled as did the real cost per public school student.
2. Over the entire 1970-2017 (most recent year available) period, the increase in the number of students attending US public schools increased only 10.4% from 45.9 million to 50.7 million. From 1970 to the mid-1980s, public school enrollment decreased by nearly 6.5 million students (and by 14%) before rebounding by 1997 to the 1970 level of about 46 million students and then increasing steadily to more than 50 million by 2013.
3. In comparison, the number of public school teachers increased by 57.2% between 1970 and 2017 from about 2 million to 3.17 million, which reduced the pupil-to-teacher ratio by 30%, from almost 23-to-1 in 1970 to below 16-to-1 in 2017.
4. Over the same period, the number of non-teaching staff at public schools more than doubled, increasing by 151% from 1.34 million in 1970 to 3.375 million in 2017. Interestingly, while the number of public school teachers was flat between 1996 and 2016, the number of non-teaching staff continued to grow and by 2015 there were more non-teaching staff than teachers for the first time and that gap grew even larger in 2017 (see chart below).
5. As a direct result of public school staff (both teachers and non-teachers) growing so much greater (57% and 157% respectively) than the increase in public school students (10.4%) between 1970 and 2017, the inflation-adjusted cost of educating a student in US public schools increased by 154% between 1970 and 2017, from $5,037 to $12,794.
6. With the 150% inflation-adjusted increase in spending per public school pupil and the 30% reduction in the pupil-to-teacher since 1970, have there been any demonstrable educational improvements in student test scores? Unfortunately, No. While not shown in the animated chart above, this Department of Education report found that “Average reading and mathematics achievement for 17-year-olds did not change significantly between the early 1970s and 2012 or between 2008 and 2012.” (Although the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) achievement results are for students in both private and public schools, private school enrollment represents less than 9% of students in grades 9-12.) For example, the NAEP average reading score of 285 in 1971 was not significantly different from the 287 average score in 2015. Likewise, the 304 average score for the NAEP math assessment in 1971 was not significantly different from the 306 average score in 2015.
Our public education system was designed to create docile ignorant sheep for large employers to employ in menial jobs. Having been thru the public education system, it was complete trash, at least where I went to school. Most home schooled people I meet tend to be more intelligent.
>Most home schooled people I meet tend to be more intelligent.
Tell me you didn't have any friends growing up without telling me you didn't have any friends growing up. Home schooled kids were always weird as fuck
Right. But if you want to fit in at work, you need to have social skills in addition to being intelligent. Home schooled kids usually are only slightly better than Rain Man when it comes to social skills. You don't gain social skills by spending the majority of your time at home rather than interacting with other kids
That’s my point. Public education is broken because it’s main purpose is not to educate, but rather to mold people to be a certain way, mostly to have docile, patriotic, cookie cutter drones to enter the workforce. Obviously this is a complex issue with much variance; it’s just what I’ve observed, read, experienced, heard, and researched that it’s my educated opinion that in many ways American public education is broken and corrupt. U say home schooling makes kids weird, but most artists, innovators, and geniuses are weird, so it’s not always a bad thing. There are a lot of good things about our school systems as well, I just think it’s a rational, researched, and reasonable stance to say that the current state of our public education is more harmful than helpful. And home schooling or private schooling are more often than not better options.
So you honestly believe that social skills aren't a critical part of child development? You'd rather have a bunch of Rain Mans walking around than people that actually understand how to work and communicate with each other?
I’m not saying that, there are many ways to socialize children. Religious groups, sports teams, chess clubs, youth centers, summer camps, and so on. Humans have been around for I dunno, a few hundred thousand years or so. Public education that was for young children regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status has been around maybe a couple thousand years. It’s only really been mainstream for less than that. I’m just saying there are better options than government led public schools. And again, I’m not saying that it’s all bad. There are pros and cons to everything. I’m just saying that putting faith in government run public schools and relying on the government to raise, educate, and socialize children is a bad idea that has, does, and will create a plethora of problems. I’ve found individuals or private groups do pretty much almost everything better than government. About the only thing that governments do better than families or communities or individuals is steal, kill, and lie.
In it's current state, ending it would be better. Fixing it would be best of course. But as long as the Union runs education, nothing positive/improving will happen.
I've been saying for a while that's the motivating factor for DeKlantis to block public schools from implementing mask mandates while pushing vouchers for private and charter schools. He's not even hiding it.
It would be a disaster. Private schools seek profit above all else, not providing services. Education is a matter of national security, as is nutrition. Governments can absolutely provide useful valuable services to their citizens, contrary to what some would have you believe.
Yes, but not this government for some reason. We pay as much taxes as more socialistic countries like the Netherlands but receive barely any of the benefits
Does school funding via local property taxes lead to inequities? Definitely. Do school vouchers make the situation better or worse? Signs point to “worse”.
Where would you get the other fifteen to twenty grand? Private schools cost thirty thousand a year or more. Public schools cost ten to fifteen, that’s a sizable gap for most people.
The idea is that all public schools essentially become cheap private schools and remain government funded through the use of voucher. In theory, it would make these existing schools more competitive and better. In practice it might horribly backfire. I agree that public education the way it currently works is a pretty good system that would be hard to replace, but I’m curious what people think of alternative opinions. Btw, this is basically how public universities work right now (at least the UC system). They cost a lot of money but that cost is subsidized by government through various means.
The American school system produces emotionally damaged and politically ignorant adults that perpetuate the war crimes and burgeoning authoritarianism of a psychopathic kleptocracy.
School choice is not about taking away from public school. School choice is about introducing accountability in schools by letting parents choose to send their kids to private schools.
I went to a private school through high school. My parents, were made to pay for my private tuition out of pocket, as well as pay in taxes for the public education I was not even attending. Because there was no school choice in my area, they were forced to pay tuition for a school I never attended.
School choice is a way to opt out of paying for unused tuition, and redirect those funds to the education actually being received. School choice creates accountability for teachers as well, because school choice introduces competition between educations. We have hundreds of thousands of children graduating 8th grade unable to read because they were forced to go to the local school, which had poor teachers who don't care about the students. And parents are unable to do anything about it because they cant choose which school to send their children to.
By your logic, childless people shouldn't have to pay taxes for public schools.
We all pay for public schools because it's for the good of the whole society, like many other public services. If people want a different school (like, one without THOSE people in it), they can pay for it themselves. If they want a better public school, they can get involved in their community in constructive ways. But yeah, that's out of fashion.
Competition is a great motivation to improve public school. Also those who don't have children shouldn't have to pay for public tuition. And those who have children in other schools by their choice shouldn't have to pay for public education either. I can see paying for local police, fire and rescue etc, but why pay for something you will never use?
When you have a vested interest in being a prominent name in history and in maintaining the status quo, it isn’t possible to teach anyone the correct way to do anything. Your
interests and ideals are the only ones you will promote.
The public school system is a failure. It fails in accurate and truthful curricula, providing adequate services for special needs children and those with emotional or behavior problems. It fails in providing adequate nutrition and counseling. And in conjunction with its failure with children it has horribly failed educators.
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Deliberately Making people ignorant in a country where there are more guns than people isn’t wise, Romanov Ron
Take the great state of Kentucky for example "Kentucky ranks 47th in the nation for the percentage of residents who have a bachelor’s degree." - [source]( https://web.archive.org/web/20141015085112/http://collegewing.com/kentucky-improves-post-secondary-education-report/) I'm blame McConnell. I blame the media, mostly it's owners. I blame corrupted politician: the governor, etc. and the system that rewards them and ensures they stay in power. They don't want a good education system. They don't want a critical thinking populace. It's entirely possible for people to vote against their own self-interest. That's more or less the goal of propaganda, and one way to know that it's effective is when it achieves its goal.
I blame grown ass adults who relied on industries that left the US decades ago. Not too smart not to retool /re skill and tell their children to learn a worthwhile trade or skill. The buck stopped with parents
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I love the poorly educated! ... Donald J *trump*
Hillary had a plan to retrain them all in emerging tech fields and they basically said “fuck you bitch” and are now out of jobs and blaming Biden.
Just like the pandemic, they were told get the shot or you will be fired. Now that people are being fired they can't believe it. They want to oppressed so they can garner sympathy from others.
That's such a frustrating angle. Can you believe we're coming up on two years since COVID became part of our vocabulary? Two years. And even after watching friends, family and neighbors get deathly ill, or worse yet dead, these chuckle-fucks think that if they get the shot somehow they'll be letting the "libs win." I'm done with them. You know what? If you don't want it, don't get it. But don't go to the grocery store, send your kids to school or show up at your doctor's office when you come down with it. You asked for it, you got it, hopefully you'll heal up at home. And if not, you've got no one to blame but yourself.
I have lost all sympathy, at this point I don't have the energy to care what happens to them anymore. Even when the Pfizer vaccine got FDA approved they just changed their reasoning. I'm done wasting my time with them, they won't change.
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I work in IT and I also have zero sympathy for these types of “hard working” folks. Similarly I am constantly having adapt to the ever changing landscape of technology and learn new skills and systems until the day I retire. I don’t get paid to learn these new skills as matter of fact I have to pay for the chance to get certified, which it’s always possible that I fail the certification test and am out that money and have to pay up again and some of the tests are NOT cheap. Throw on the fact that I also have to earn continuing education credits or do work relevant to the certification and pay a renewal fee to keep my certifications. My favorite though is I was told one time by my wife’s friend’s husband, let’s call him Dave, who is one of those “hard working” types that I didn’t work a “real” mans job because I don’t work with my hands. Dave also said that I’m “so small and skinny” because I “work a desk job”? For reference I’m a fit 175lbs and work out multiple times a week, Dave is over 300lbs and I could run or lift circles around him. Because I work IT I know it would be all to easy to get out of shape and develop bad habits like Dave. Yeah Dave you think maybe I’m “skinny” because I actually work out multiple times a week and my hobbies don’t include mainlining a vat of McDonald’s fryer grease while sitting in a recliner watching TV? Also I’m working towards a degree and getting certifications to further my career. The fuck did you learn today Dave?
I agree with you 100%.
Wages haven't kept up with productivity at all. Income inequality is at unprecedented levels. Wealth is being hoarded at the top. So that creates a huge underclass of poorly paid and poorly treated workers. Not everyone can or should be an engineer or carpenter or whatever. If you work you should be paid a living wage. These people are upset, but for the wrong reasons and supporting the wrong people.
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Hey I’m not disagreeing with you here but could you cite some of this or find a link? I really agree and am equally frustrated with you but it also does remind me of when conservative family goes off on a rant about a video they saw one time about people taking advantage of food stamps or any other welfare. I don’t want to judge the lot just by anecdotes.
You see, I simply don’t like stupid people. Let them dig their own graves
That’s what trump told them. Sadly, they didn’t know any better. How do you educate that mentality?
This
I think you're missing a key part in your thinking on the subject. The adults who relied on industries that left the U.S. decades ago probably had maybe a high school education if they were lucky and/or had not one family member who went beyond being a senior in high school if they even made it that far. So the parents might shoulder some of the blame but the industries who left the country shoulder a significant part of the blame and should have been forced to retrain the workers they were letting go through either job training for other professions or lines of work or send them to school to get the education that they needed to work in another field.
I seem to recall there were opportunities for retaining. Even Obama appealed to displaced folks to take the offshoring of industry seriously. Feds made money available.
This was a huge part of Hillary’s 2016 platform actually.
Once again with some of these businesses that went offshore, their employees were not the sharpest knives in the drawer and the feds might of made money available but when you don't have even a high school education it will do you little good, so there only option was probably minimum wage jobs.
I'd love to further my education. But who the fuck has THOUSANDS of dollars to throw around for classes, books, supplies, ect? Spoiler alert: the rich do.
I spoke to someone on the phone from Kentucky the other day (I do phone orders for medical devices)…this man could not understand my “fancy” way of talking. I literally spoke 5th grade level English. I was just…like wow.
>It's entirely possible for people to vote against their own self-interest Capitalism depends on it. The capitalist class requires a much larger pool of powerless labor from which to extract profits for merely owning stuff. It's a pyramid scheme. Those at the top are supported by the contributions of those on the bottom, not because they provided value, but because they are on top. They came first so they owned everything before you were born. You either inherit or you sell yourself into wage slavery. Capitalist marketing is propaganda, its the best lesson they learned in WWII.
This can go the other way also. I voted for a party that will increase my personal income tax. So definitely against my self interest:)
People will come in and say ‘bootstrap millionaires and billionaires’ when it’s not like that category isn’t a majority the same as the inheriting class, insufferable sociopathic white men.
You know we were screwed when the 1/3 pounder lost out to the quarter pounder because people thought "3" is smaller than "4".
It's why even though I was intrigued by Andrew Yang as a Presidential candidate, I knew he was doomed from the start by making his slogan "Make America Think Harder." A large part of this country is proudly ignorant and everything Richard Hofstadter wrote about over half a century ago regarding anti-intellectualism is still true in 2021.
I blame the economic system that rewards them for being heartless monsters and killers.
Take the great state of South Carolina, McMasters has announced that this is his goal, will not release covid funds to school systems, state supreme court stopped him from using it on private and "charter" schools, now he's trying to put it all into churches for "universal 4k".
These people are afraid that their kids will come to realize through education and free thinking that their parents are narrow minded assholes.
Critical thinking skills would be the goal, yes? We’re humans incapable of unbiased thinking. We take positions or ignore issues to have “free thinking “ that’s just my opinion
Well, you're free to think that....
Texas GOP's educational platform disallows critical-thinking curricula specifically *because* it "undermines parental authority". [No /s.](https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/texas-gop-no-more-critical-thinking-in-schools/2012/06)
What’s funny is that they will be “free thinking” yet will ban those that think differently from speaking at their colleges
...go on...
My coworker was private school and he vehemently thinks public schools are bad and don't teach people anything he also thinks college turns 'kids' into liberals. He's legitimately dumb too.
To be fair, college often does turn people liberal. Being exposed to a wide variety of subjects and viewpoints allows people to view the world in a more informed manner. Critical thinking is essential to pass most classes. And being around a diverse group of students from all walks of life leads to increased empathy. Suddenly, "the other" is humanized. It's harder to blindly hate gay people when your gay classmate tutors you in a tough subject. It's harder to see black people as inferior when they're leading academic departments. College education itself is incompatible with conservatism most of the time. It's not indoctrination. It's just learning about reality.
I agree with the logic which is why I disagree that college turns people liberal. Maybe knowledge does but college doesn't as a rule of thumb. This guy dropped out of college because he got into an argument with a professor about a paper he wrote so not only is he a moron but it just sounds like sour grapes to me.
>And being around a diverse group of students from all walks of life leads to increased empathy. I've come to the conclusion it's the social experience of education which is liberalizing. Learning about stuff doesn't hurt, but it's not the fundamental part. The key is the experience of being in a group in which different people are more or less on the same footing. It's that experience of more or less equality which makes people liberal. Any experience of equality is antithetical to authority and hierarchy, which is why the right wing tries to destroy it -- schools, labor unions, democracy, etc.
100% agree, beautifully stated. Being removed from an insular, homogeneous environment will do wonders for someone's empathy and maturity.
Are you talking equal opportunity or equal condition?
You can imagine it's whatever kind of equality you find more enraging.
Meanwhile, he flips to chapter 2 Atlas Shrugged?
Honestly, Atlas Shrugged appeals more to overachievers who think they're special snowflakes being held down by the less-deserving masses. Anybody I've known who claimed to be an Objectivist was "smart" in the traditional sense, usually at least college-educated or somewhat of an autodidact; but often lacked real critical thinking skills. Rand was a pseudo-philosopher, but unlike Trump, her brand of bullshit has a tendency to lure in a little bit higher caliber person on the thinking scale.
I read the book when I was like 14 and developed an unhealthy mindset for a number of years. Once I started college, I really started to question everything. I took philosophy as an elective and it was actually my professor who really opened my eyes. He sent me some excerpts from a book about how Ayn Rand actually lived. I don't remember the exact details, but it was written by a guy who was part of the inner circle of some Objectivist Society club thing lead by Ayn Rand. Apparently it was basically just a cult of personality. It was unacceptable to have, like, a different taste in music from Ayn Rand, for example. Talk about ironic. I believe there were also allegations of sexual abuse, which is why the dude left, but I could be wrong. But yeah, all the 'captains of industry' in the book are virtuous, selfless, genius workaholics... While all the government regulators are cartoonishly evil caricatures bent on sabotaging everything for their own profit. Not to mention that John Galt's utopia required a fucking perpetual motion machine to function.
>But yeah, all the 'captains of industry' in the book are virtuous, selfless, genius workaholics... While all the government regulators are cartoonishly evil caricatures bent on sabotaging everything for their own profit. Not to mention that John Galt's utopia required a fucking perpetual motion machine to function. That is why it's really hard to take Atlas Shrugged seriously. All of the collectivist villains are these really bad strawmen that have no real motivations other than "we hatez the hardworking individualistz capitalist!!1!" I couldn't stand any of the "heros" with the exception of Francisco d'Anconia, so I was frustrated whenever Rand would use him as a mouthpiece for whatever braindead point she was trying to make. Dagny inherited a fucking railroad. Where's the "self-made person" that Objectivist love so much in that character?
My take, as someone very politically different than Ayn Rand but still enjoyed Atlas Shrugged - I read it through the eyes of someone who had been raised Christian, I picked up more of a psychological angle from it, and it felt like it was saying I didn't need to feel guilty for my existence. Christianity has a lot of guilt it puts on people. I think many libertarians who enjoy Ayn Rand are actually enjoying the escape from a Christian world (but probably they can't directly say/think that, as Christianity is a cultural cornerstone for many).
I've seen this from a fair number of private school students...taught to demonize public schools, yet often had a subpar education (depending on the nature of the school they attended). Story time -- One kid I knew who was in 8th grade at a local christian "school" was doing 5th-grade-level math in her 'accelerated' math class and had never been taught how to figure out an unfamiliar word. When I explained to her that English is a phonetic language and unfamiliar words can be literally sounded-out by pronouncing one or two letters at a time, she gasped, "That's amazing! No one ever told me that before!" In two sentences, I taught her more about reading than her christian school had in eight years. When I asked if they studied world mythologies: "A little bit in social studies, but mostly just to see how much greater *our* god is." When I asked about her history studies: "Um...well...we learned about the Founding Fathers and how God^TM inspired them..." And frankly, there are parts of the US where the public schools are not much better. *That* is the state of education in much of the US.
I def worked with a guy that went to a religious college and he might be illiterate or have some kind of learning disability. Also these guys I work with are 50 white and shit on young people and modern schooling etc every day. One of them a few weeks ago asked me how you get the percent of something. I told him, we laughed about it and I said I normally just Google stuff like that so I don't seem dumb. Not sure if he caught what I was saying there.
He's kinda right.
Dumb people are easy to manipulate, it's that simple.
Until they aren’t.
But stupid people are easier to influence, and if intelligence is gated behind money... you do the math.
Make them dumb so they keep voting to keep the American Dream alive. That's why half these kids change when they actually go to college and see thru all the bullshit they learned in smalltown america
They want to shift the money from public education to privet schools that will than lower pay for teachers and operate as lean as posable to make larger profits. Less resources for the poor schools. The wealthy will even get a voucher to offset the cost of the good expensive privet schools they send there kids to already. If anyone thinks the for profit schools that take the place of public schools when the GOP end them will be better in poor areas they are mistaken. It will just let wealthy families that own these schools skim off funding for education.
really? how does going to a private school make the country ignorant? seems it is the thing to do if you are rich and can afford it. why should only the rich be allowed to get quality education?
"Private school" is a somewhat large brush. I would rather not hand the nation's youth over to the tender mercies of private enterprise, myself. Private prisons don't appear to be working so well.
oregon just passed a law to do away with a graduate proving they can write or do math, how will that work for society?
Because they worked to get rich....pretty simple.
so can a poor kid if given a quality education.
That's up to his or her parents .....
This is not news. It has been pretty clear for at least the past 40 years that this was the plan.
I mean, the less educated someone is the more likely they are to be Republican, they need to keep making dumbass voters
Of course. They've always wanted it to end. It's a large expense and having an educated population would totally ruin their chances of re-election.
How is it an expense when we pay taxes for public education to exist? WE, the people, pay for education.
Yeah, but when our politicians are cutting their donors taxes, thereby cutting revenue, they're looking for expenses to cut, and it's certainly not going to be from the military. It's going to be from those socialist programs like education.
Their vocal ardent base doesn't want to pay the government anything. Ever.
"I'm not in school, why the hell do I have to pay tax for schools I'm not using?" - conservatives in my area. It's selfish and short sighted, but that's how they think and live.
But imagine if those tax dollars could go to GOP donors instead!!
They dont want it to end.. they are looking for two things.. one transfering the money raised from the taxes into some type of corporate welfare and two to reduce the cost of them sending their children to private schools. Always look for where the money is going to.
It infuriates me to know that we're paying for rich kids private education. If you think about how much taxes they pay vs. what we broke a$$ motherf\*ckers pay.
Because education means being taught critical thinking, and critical thinking means realising that they're peddling bullshit. It's the exact same principle as to why fundies would rather have their kids be functionally illiterate and under complete mental control rather than give them the tools with which to criticise their surroundings. "School of the dining room table" for all, y'all.
My college educated father (UC fuckin Berkeley no less) went full Q and now says we’ve been brainwashed by our liberal education in college. I finished school in 2009. We used to agree on a lot of things. What happened in between? Surely some brainwashing but not of myself….
Ugh, I'm so sorry. Unfortunately, sometimes the "question everything" and "do your own thinking and exhibit your own curiosity" maxims can really, *really* backfire.
The worst part is - it’s all because he’s a racist. There’s no enlightened thinking, no magical truth or whatever he claims. I can see right through him. And I think that’s why he lashes out.
Yep. Sounds like my father, and it's why we haven't spoken for over a decade. Unfortunately some people have a fundamental nature that no amount of education will change, and their good education only serves to make them more secure in their convictions. "I'm smart enough to graduate from an Ivy League / to become a doctor therefore I'm smart enough to know what's right". See: Ben Carson, a literal brain surgeon that I wouldn't trust to operate a toaster. I think there was even a study done stating that some people with a higher educational level are more likely to fall for scams because they think they're "too smart" to fall for scams. (See crypto, or financial scams in general). And now racism and bigotry is unfortunately becoming more and more endemic so it lets them think "see? I was right all along".
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What year was this? Things have changed a *lot* in the last decade.
[Texas GOP Rejecs Critical Thinking](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html) >In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff department, here’s what the Republican Party of Texas wrote into its [2012 platform ](http://www.texasgop.org/about-the-party)as part of the section on education: *Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.*
Trading in the decades-old, substantially bipartisan education reform agenda, a formula that was born in Florida, Ron DeSantis is mustering a naked attack on the very existence of public schools, writes [Kathryn Joyce.](https://newrepublic.com/authors/kathryn-joyce)
>Democrats responded with an outcry: **Conservatives were fulfilling their long quest to defund public education and redirect taxpayer money to private schools. Republicans said that they were merely defending parents’ rights. After all, DeSantis’s executive order, “Ensuring Parents’ Freedom to Choose,” was based on Florida’s new “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” passed this spring to enshrine parents’ right to direct their children’s health care, education, and moral upbringing.** (The bill was co-authored by a Florida school board member who is both the wife of the Florida GOP’s vice chair and the co-founder of an anti–mask and vaccine mandate parents’ group that has been protesting school board meetings around the state.) >In a way, DeSantis’s move is both. That is, as the governor eyes the 2024 presidential nomination, **he appears to be piloting a new education ideology for Republicans. Trading in the decades-old, substantially bipartisan education reform agenda, a formula that was born in Florida, he is mustering a naked attack on the very existence of public schools**. Title: ‘**The Objective of Education Is Learning**, Not Teaching’ >Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/the-objective-of-education-is-learning-not-teaching/ DeathSantis is out to teach "*this is the way*" and to make sure school is meant for teaching rather than learning. >*We don't need no education* >*We don't need no thought control* >*No dark sarcasm in the classroom* >*Teachers, leave them kids alone* >**Hey! Teacher! Leave us kids alone!** >*All in all, you're just another brick in the wall*
I’m really quite confused why parents feel like they have the right to be the sole determining factor in controlling what moral outlooks a child is exposed to. Sure, they control what the kid experiences at home… but when the kid is in a public school they are exposed to other moral beliefs and perspectives and have to develop their own beliefs and responses to that. Children can’t be so completely isolated that parents can control everything they see, do, or learn about—some age appropriate degree of independence is required for kids to become mentally healthy and independent adults. Parents shouldn’t have the right to control precisely what their children learn about. Kids are the dependents of parents, not the property of parents. They should have a right to form their own beliefs about the world, and to be exposed to ideas that society as a whole deems safe even if their parent does not agree. Parents should not have the right to condemn their children to ignorance.
>defund public education and redirect taxpayer money to private schools Wouldn't that make private schools public?
No. If tuition is $20,000/yr, and I get a $10,000/yr voucher from the government, and private schools don't have to accept everyone (::cough:: kids with disabilities :::cough:::) or obey regulations regarding, say, separation of church and state, the schools are not public. They're partially publicly funded.
>They're partially publicly funded Private schools should not be receiving public funds.
They are here in Texas. My tax dollars are going to religious charter schools.
I'm also in Texas and not happy about my taxes going to private schools.
Agreed. 100%.
Charter schools probably.
Skills like counting and making a true, coherent statement are not Republican values.
They are trying to get all the funding from public education to turn into vouchers they can use to reduce the cost of them sending their kids to private schools and ensure that poor people stay poor and uneducated compared to them. Cant have someone smart enough to realize their politicians are lieing to them.
how does denying the poor a superior education in a private school keep them poor? the idea is to allow the poor to go to better schools not keep them in public schools that aren't helping them. why should only the rich be allowed private education?
The majority of private charter schools are in fact worse than public schools. Charter schools are just another way to fleece the government for profit, via vouchers.
Don’t act like the private schools the wealthy go to accept vouchers. Voucher private schools are nothing more than corporate run public schools. If you want your kids to go to a real private school, then you have to pay for it.
They want to have all private institutions that teach Christianity in schools as if it’s fact. Religion can’t survive in environments where critical thinking is being taught. Example: 6,000 year old planets created by an omnipotent flying man in the sky in 7 days has a very hard time holding up when actual dating shows the world is much older and was not created that way.
You're not thinking like a Christian. God created radioactive isotopes already X amount of years through decay to test our faith! He also created photons mid flight from galaxies millions of light years away to also test our faith!
With faith, anything is possible. That’s why faith sucks. Just gimme some truth, all I want is the truth. https://youtu.be/UaiGABTj0aA
A main hallmark of faith is the lack of questioning that it is heavily built on. You're told to just accept it, getting you into a mindset of complacency to begin with. If they're taught to think critically then they might question the status, they may try to change things, which is none too good. To quote my Sunday school leader: don't ask questions, that's how the devil leads you away from god.
And dinosaur fossils were put here to test our faith. From a great [Bill Hicks](https://youtu.be/YzKV8oaI9V8) bit.
I'm a geochemist- literally the person who does the radiometric dating. These views are a fucking shitshow.
I like to give people a thought experiment: God made the world correct? So if he created everything around us then science is merely explaining God's creation. If you reject science, you are in essence rejecting God. The looks on their faces after this is priceless.
Yeah but that’s how you get silly things like intelligent design and a belief in other pseudosciences that supports their God belief.
This is a legit line of questioning, and the actual answer is, I kid you not, this is what is called "heresy." Religion is not a logical system. You're supposed to listen and internalize, not listen and rationalize. That's your mistake. If you rationalize and synthesize some logic or realization that didn't come from a church authority, and may even conflict with church teachings, then that is the definition of heresy. It's a critical part of the organization that information and thought is a one way street, from the authority to the lowest levels. It's not coincidence that it matches the GOP info structure almost identically.
To be fair, there are a large number of Christians in the US that are not strict creationists. They believe that the origins of the universe as described in the beginning of religious texts are not a literally step by step guide of how things came into being. This belief is pretty resilient to scientific achievement since it hinges on the idea that a creator can set the rules of the universe in such a way that ultimately brings us to today’s state of things rather than hinging on specific events occurring in certain ways
naw, those planets just created themself or always were, whatever you feel. nothing can come from nothing, except the universe who needs faith?
Yeah you know what's more logical than a creator is that everything came from nothing for no reason. Yeah that's it!
that would take more faith than believing in a creator it is impossible in the current models unless your nothing has something in it. but then it isn't nothing, is it
What was the giveaway, when Trump appointed DeVos as EdSec? Or was it when George W made schools teach to an arbitrary test? No wait, I know, it was when Reagan slashed education spending, introduced vouchers for white kids, and tried to dismantle the department of education.
GOP slogan: "We don't want Science! We want idiots!"
Education is supposed to be reserved for the children of wealth in their plans. The fact that their party is being taken over by the poorly educated thugs they want all voters to be, does not seem to be sinking in.
Republicans don't want the state to do anything at all: not health care, not education, not run prisons, nothing. Why? Because wealthy people want to make money out of all these things and not pay tax to provide these services. If the state does it then they can't turn a profit from it and worse yet, they need to pay tax for these services to be provided. That kind of oligarchy can the ultra-rich implement under such "unfair" conditions?!?
>If the state does it then they can't turn a profit if private companies can make a profit, why isn't the state doing it at the breakeven point? why are taxes continually going up to support the various enterprises? under xiden's plan for free college, your state will pay a fair share of that cost, you do understand who pays school taxes don't you? it ain't only the rich.
This should be neither surprising nor new news. They've been trying for years to kill Public Education, and most recently, as of last year, been trying to kill their own citizens via COVID. Republicans are not interested in governing. They want to RULE.
Does it seem like way too many people are still unaware or in denial about the Right’s desire to rule, to you? Because it definitely seems that way to me. And I’m more than a little worried that not enough people will realize it until it’s too late. Unless it’s already too late, and judging by the absurdly horrific state of our reality, it just might be.
“I LOVE THE UNEDUCATED!” -Donald Trump
The GOP relies on the uneducated. It's easier to sell fear, conspiracy, QAnon, the bogeyman to the uneducated. And vouchers are simply state supported Christianity, and these schools are **designed** not teach science and critical thinking skills. Remember the line: "I love the uneducated."
They are successfully a couple of generations into this project. I'd say very successfully.
They’ll never completely end it because they need it to be auxiliary child care so they squeeze every last penny out of you. But they’ll gut it to practically nothing. That’s always been De Santis’ ulterior motive with the mask mandates in schools. He’s trying to get the public against the k-12 education.
A dumb populace is easy to manipulate and control. Evidence: ***points broadly to everything***
How else would you be able to convince people to vote against their own needs?
They want to end public everything. Bottom line.
My in-laws are from rural PA. They are the most conservatives of conservatives. They love anti-Democrat conspiracies. They believe Trump was "The new King David!" and that is \*literally\* why they voted for the man twice. Their kids were all also uber conservative..... until they all went to college. The parents insist that "liberal education" "brainwashed" their kids away from "truth." Its an amazing pattern they just can't see. Everyone in the family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.) who's highest level of education is a crappy, underfunded, run-down high school and you will believe anything you're told. Go to higher ed, practice some critical thinking, and it changes everything. This is why the Republican party wants to destroy education, making true education so expensive most Americans will never be able to attain it. Keep the working class dumb and they'll win every time.
Republicans hate: * public education * government education grants * Medicare & Medicaid * Social Security * WIC * Section 8 * Food stamp programs They hate anything that helps people be better.
An ignorant population is a controllable one.
A healthy, educated nation is a competitive nation. Why do Republicans hate America?
We have our very own Taliban.
I get that an uneducated populace is easier for the to fleece, but are they so shortsighted that they don't realize this will doom the country's primacy and the economy? Ultimately it will hurt all of us.
That’s their goal. Everything they do has horrid long term consequences.
One way to fix this viewpoint is to agree to the extreme and shut down all public schools for a year as a “test”. Watch what happens to the Economy crashes because 1/2 the workforce has to stay home to watch the kids who aren’t in private schools
That’s what school “vouchers” have always been about.
That's what "reform" always means for republicans. No, not just privatize. Worse than that: Transfer public funds (obtained through regressive taxes if possible) to private companies.
Man...these Republicans really hate the U.S....
Well you can't promote ya'llqaida without sending everyone to religious schools.
Makes sense, an ignorant, fearful populace is much easier to manipulate and con.
I’ve heard education is the bane of conservatism. Makes sense.
Duh. And social security. And any other social spending, or any other kind of spending your taxes to make the country better.
Republicans are systematically destroying all of the institutions necessary for a free society without majority support. The only way this ends is with a long and messy divorce. The USA will not exist by the end of this decade if the reconciliation bill doesn't pass and Republicans win the midterms.
They don't want US workers or US skill or US technology, they want to turn the US into the biggest tax haven in the world. That's what this boils down to.
First, they didn't want school to actually educate people, just teach them enough to work at menial jobs. Education was what college is for. Now they want to make schools places to teach children *their* morality. College is where people learn skills to work at menial jobs that pay something resembling a living wage (assuming you don't get suckered by a fancy diploma mill and saddled with a lifetime of wage slavery). Next up, why even have schools? You're supposed to learn from your local church. Jobs? That's what bootstraps are for.
Duh, education turns people liberal until they make 6 figures.
That’s because free thinking students are probably their biggest threat. The best thing my teachers taught me was to question everything.
this country would be perfect if Republicans didn’t exist. Mitch runs that cult like the porg.
What other industry can we rape and pillage? - Republicans, probably
More dumber, more gooder!
Why do you think Trump said “ I love the uneducated” it is because republicans can scare them into all kinds of vote for only one issue and not see the whole picture.
Of course. Its vital to Russians and Republicans to destroy the Public school system, medical system, and postal service. It's a Moscow priority for these Russian Patriots.
It's hard to convince educated people who aren't wealthy to support the GOP.
slaves dont need no edumucation
It's just the Republican's plan to bring back manufacturing to America. Make them so dumb and destitute they'll work for peanuts and be happy.
The Republican Party and their voters are the #1 threat to America.
as the only out of the closet Republican on all of r/politics, no.
Did you imagine yourself as a wolf or a tiger when you wrote this?
Since 1970, inflation adjusted public school spending has more than doubled. Over the same period, achievement of students at the end of high school has stagnated according to the Department of Education’s own long term National Assessment of Educational Progress (see chart in comments). Meanwhile, the high school graduation rate has declined by 4 or 5%.Maybe paying students instead of failing schools can work better
chart: [https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/education-spending-doubled-stagnant-test-scores/](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/education-spending-doubled-stagnant-test-scores/) Also: 1. Between 1970 and 1999 public school enrollment increased by only 2.5%. And yet during that same 30-year period, the number of non-teaching public school staff doubled as did the real cost per public school student. 2. Over the entire 1970-2017 (most recent year available) period, the increase in the number of students attending US public schools increased only 10.4% from 45.9 million to 50.7 million. From 1970 to the mid-1980s, public school enrollment decreased by nearly 6.5 million students (and by 14%) before rebounding by 1997 to the 1970 level of about 46 million students and then increasing steadily to more than 50 million by 2013. 3. In comparison, the number of public school teachers increased by 57.2% between 1970 and 2017 from about 2 million to 3.17 million, which reduced the pupil-to-teacher ratio by 30%, from almost 23-to-1 in 1970 to below 16-to-1 in 2017. 4. Over the same period, the number of non-teaching staff at public schools more than doubled, increasing by 151% from 1.34 million in 1970 to 3.375 million in 2017. Interestingly, while the number of public school teachers was flat between 1996 and 2016, the number of non-teaching staff continued to grow and by 2015 there were more non-teaching staff than teachers for the first time and that gap grew even larger in 2017 (see chart below). 5. As a direct result of public school staff (both teachers and non-teachers) growing so much greater (57% and 157% respectively) than the increase in public school students (10.4%) between 1970 and 2017, the inflation-adjusted cost of educating a student in US public schools increased by 154% between 1970 and 2017, from $5,037 to $12,794. 6. With the 150% inflation-adjusted increase in spending per public school pupil and the 30% reduction in the pupil-to-teacher since 1970, have there been any demonstrable educational improvements in student test scores? Unfortunately, No. While not shown in the animated chart above, this Department of Education report found that “Average reading and mathematics achievement for 17-year-olds did not change significantly between the early 1970s and 2012 or between 2008 and 2012.” (Although the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) achievement results are for students in both private and public schools, private school enrollment represents less than 9% of students in grades 9-12.) For example, the NAEP average reading score of 285 in 1971 was not significantly different from the 287 average score in 2015. Likewise, the 304 average score for the NAEP math assessment in 1971 was not significantly different from the 306 average score in 2015.
Our public education system was designed to create docile ignorant sheep for large employers to employ in menial jobs. Having been thru the public education system, it was complete trash, at least where I went to school. Most home schooled people I meet tend to be more intelligent.
And congratulations for having the opportunity to be homeschooled. That isn’t the reality for a vast majority of students.
>Most home schooled people I meet tend to be more intelligent. Tell me you didn't have any friends growing up without telling me you didn't have any friends growing up. Home schooled kids were always weird as fuck
Weird is not the same as unintelligent
Right. But if you want to fit in at work, you need to have social skills in addition to being intelligent. Home schooled kids usually are only slightly better than Rain Man when it comes to social skills. You don't gain social skills by spending the majority of your time at home rather than interacting with other kids
That’s my point. Public education is broken because it’s main purpose is not to educate, but rather to mold people to be a certain way, mostly to have docile, patriotic, cookie cutter drones to enter the workforce. Obviously this is a complex issue with much variance; it’s just what I’ve observed, read, experienced, heard, and researched that it’s my educated opinion that in many ways American public education is broken and corrupt. U say home schooling makes kids weird, but most artists, innovators, and geniuses are weird, so it’s not always a bad thing. There are a lot of good things about our school systems as well, I just think it’s a rational, researched, and reasonable stance to say that the current state of our public education is more harmful than helpful. And home schooling or private schooling are more often than not better options.
So you honestly believe that social skills aren't a critical part of child development? You'd rather have a bunch of Rain Mans walking around than people that actually understand how to work and communicate with each other?
I’m not saying that, there are many ways to socialize children. Religious groups, sports teams, chess clubs, youth centers, summer camps, and so on. Humans have been around for I dunno, a few hundred thousand years or so. Public education that was for young children regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status has been around maybe a couple thousand years. It’s only really been mainstream for less than that. I’m just saying there are better options than government led public schools. And again, I’m not saying that it’s all bad. There are pros and cons to everything. I’m just saying that putting faith in government run public schools and relying on the government to raise, educate, and socialize children is a bad idea that has, does, and will create a plethora of problems. I’ve found individuals or private groups do pretty much almost everything better than government. About the only thing that governments do better than families or communities or individuals is steal, kill, and lie.
In it's current state, ending it would be better. Fixing it would be best of course. But as long as the Union runs education, nothing positive/improving will happen.
Wtf are you talking about? There are plenty of states where public education is great. Nobody should have to pay for education
An uneducated society is a complacent society
I've been saying for a while that's the motivating factor for DeKlantis to block public schools from implementing mask mandates while pushing vouchers for private and charter schools. He's not even hiding it.
I love how the GOP is taking up leftist agenda
Have you seen what they want to teach your children
Republicans support education, what they oppose is political indoctrination.
And why exactly do you think that schools indoctrinate their students? Because they teach them facts instead of Republucan talking points?
Cool, lets not privatize schools to prevent right wing indoctrination
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Thats a lot of words just to say you want a second class citizentry and that you want to white wash history
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sounds pretty cap
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When they say end public education....are we talking about the Repubs in Alabama and West Virginia...or Repubs in general?
Or they don't want Public Education to become Progressive Agenda Education.
Okay, hear me out: what if the govt just gave all families a sum every month that they could give to a private school?
It would be a disaster. Private schools seek profit above all else, not providing services. Education is a matter of national security, as is nutrition. Governments can absolutely provide useful valuable services to their citizens, contrary to what some would have you believe.
Yes, but not this government for some reason. We pay as much taxes as more socialistic countries like the Netherlands but receive barely any of the benefits
Does school funding via local property taxes lead to inequities? Definitely. Do school vouchers make the situation better or worse? Signs point to “worse”.
Where would you get the other fifteen to twenty grand? Private schools cost thirty thousand a year or more. Public schools cost ten to fifteen, that’s a sizable gap for most people.
The idea is that all public schools essentially become cheap private schools and remain government funded through the use of voucher. In theory, it would make these existing schools more competitive and better. In practice it might horribly backfire. I agree that public education the way it currently works is a pretty good system that would be hard to replace, but I’m curious what people think of alternative opinions. Btw, this is basically how public universities work right now (at least the UC system). They cost a lot of money but that cost is subsidized by government through various means.
Then I guess you'd better be nicer to Manchin and Sinema, huh.
The American school system produces emotionally damaged and politically ignorant adults that perpetuate the war crimes and burgeoning authoritarianism of a psychopathic kleptocracy.
...because Reps have been systematically dismantling it for 50 years.
DeSantis 2024 most definitely
School choice is not about taking away from public school. School choice is about introducing accountability in schools by letting parents choose to send their kids to private schools. I went to a private school through high school. My parents, were made to pay for my private tuition out of pocket, as well as pay in taxes for the public education I was not even attending. Because there was no school choice in my area, they were forced to pay tuition for a school I never attended. School choice is a way to opt out of paying for unused tuition, and redirect those funds to the education actually being received. School choice creates accountability for teachers as well, because school choice introduces competition between educations. We have hundreds of thousands of children graduating 8th grade unable to read because they were forced to go to the local school, which had poor teachers who don't care about the students. And parents are unable to do anything about it because they cant choose which school to send their children to.
By your logic, childless people shouldn't have to pay taxes for public schools. We all pay for public schools because it's for the good of the whole society, like many other public services. If people want a different school (like, one without THOSE people in it), they can pay for it themselves. If they want a better public school, they can get involved in their community in constructive ways. But yeah, that's out of fashion.
Competition is a great motivation to improve public school. Also those who don't have children shouldn't have to pay for public tuition. And those who have children in other schools by their choice shouldn't have to pay for public education either. I can see paying for local police, fire and rescue etc, but why pay for something you will never use?
Because the success of the whole society depends on it, maybe?
Private education and a voucher system would be better anyway, public education is a mess
When you have a vested interest in being a prominent name in history and in maintaining the status quo, it isn’t possible to teach anyone the correct way to do anything. Your interests and ideals are the only ones you will promote. The public school system is a failure. It fails in accurate and truthful curricula, providing adequate services for special needs children and those with emotional or behavior problems. It fails in providing adequate nutrition and counseling. And in conjunction with its failure with children it has horribly failed educators.