If one judges matters by intentions (such as by presuming that effects flow from intentions), one lives in a very congenial world. You are always right, because your intentions are always good. Those who disagree with you must, therefore, have “wrong” intentions and so always be wrong
(
Read more... )
is simply bullshit.
Your ‘example’ of totalitarian regimes is a furphy: they want to control education, like they want to control everything else, because that is what they do. They eliminate private schools because they eliminate all opposition, competition and choice, because that is what they do.
That is a very different thing from providing a service. A service which, don't forget, was provided by the government in the first place out of the socialist, dare I say communist, idea that poor children deserve education too ( ... )
Reply
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
"Making little Americans" was an explicit part of having government schooling in the US. Such "nation building" was, in one form or other, a pretty common aim, including in Australia. The story out here was not quite as different as all that.
I am a little confused about how providing education is seen as discouraging a wish to get educated.
That there was going to be a push to increase provision for education is more or less a given. Besides, we all have an interested in a literate citizenry. The issue is more why the government would do it. It persistently came down to some form of "because we do not trust anyone else to do it the way we want".
My point about intentions was not to complain that people or policies have them, but about using them as a basis judgments about policy effectiveness/goodness.
Reply
Reply
That there was going to be a push to increase education levels is a given. The interesting question is why get the state to provide schooling itself. Which is some version of "because we do not trust others to do it". Having the regulator also be the provider means you can also give yourself necessary free passes.
As for literacy, etc, government provision has not exactly been covering itself in glory on that one. Not that it is easy to find out exactly how well, or not, they are doing. Perhaps someone should prod the regulator on that. Oh, wait ...
Reply
Because at the time, there were the religious schools, and there were the (few) private schools, and there were... Oh, right, there was nothing else, and it wasn't seen as cost effective, let alone profitable, to give education to poor people. And yet it was a common good, which enhanced all people. And so, as a common good, the government took up its provision.
I imagine that a Thatcherite might find this incomprehensible, yet still it makes sense.
Reply
Reply
Australia does not have such a system of tests, and the inevitable orders from politicians and other people with no idea what they're talking about are resisted because those who know most about pedagogy know that the results of such tests can be used productively, but as soon as they get reduced to a meaningless number, and the schools put into a ranked list, all that ( ... )
Reply
And the American system does about as well as a range of other government systems, so it is hard to blame ASAT for that. Americans can at least actually do some comparison in outcomes from year to year and group to group.
Reply
The ASATs may well be providing comparable data, but if those data are not the data that actually carry useful and meaningful information, then what is the point?
And measuring to three decimal points the increase in adult illiteracy rates in the US is not actually going anywhere to fix that problem, and the incessant testing (which, every time the scores come out worse, the calls come to increase the testing, as if measuring something twice will change the answer) are actually part of what is causing those degradations.
Amongst other things, of course. Such as the school system in the US consisting in many places as a cross between a child-minding service and a jail, with a insane hothouse social environment, with teachers with even less pay and lower conditions than in Australia, &c &c.
Reply
And listing predictable problems of public provision, of regulator-as-provider, is not exactly an endorsement of public provision.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Water has been corporatised, not privatised and any problems are the failure to build dams and price correctly, both government failures.
I fail to see what the major issues are with power (apart from some of the private operators over-bidding for the assets) or buses. Have not been following the ins and outs of Connex's problems in detail, but I suspect the contracts have not been sufficiently well specified (or, alternatively, properly enforced). We still seem to be doing notably better than Sydney rail.
That the Government is both schooling regulator and provider and uses the bureaucracy as its instruments for both remains a fundamental conflict of interest that (negatively) purveys the system. Yes, regulation of schools should be entirely separated from their management.
Reply
Article of Faith II: any department of the Government may as well be the Government ( ... )
Reply
Leave a comment