Tenured failure and self-indulgent pedagogy

[erudito]

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

Comments

Re: Hysteria (Part III)

[catsidhe]

“Yes, and of course there is no such thing as quality products in the private sector and the only form of private provision is for-profit.”

The first half of that sentence is arrant bullshit and you know it, given that I thought I made my thoughts on the place of quality as a selling point, and with a limited market (everyone wants it, but not everyone is willing or able to pay for it), and besides, schools are a more-or-less captive market (people don't tend to shop around for schools once they've selected one).

And the point of a private enterprise is to make profit, period. They make profit by providing a service, but profit is the point. If it costs more to add quality, but there is no incentive to increase prices to pay for it and then some, then there is immediate disincentive against doing so. There are non-profit organisations which provide services, but then they are not exactly “private” either. And they have their own problems.

If you've been talking all along about making all public schools into non-profit community organisations, such as kindergartens are, then say so. There may even be benefits in doing so... but these would have to be investigated from more than a doctrinaire position of “look, if the government is doing it it's bad, OK?”, just as it can't be rejected from a position of “only the government can do this”.

I believe I have good arguments, however, as to why widespread or universal corporatisation of schools is a really dumb idea.

Re: Hysteria (Part III)

[erudito]

"Private provision" means just that, it does not have to be corporate provision, that is just one form of private provision. After all, 'private schools' do not mean 'corporate schools'.

Your penchant for interpreting dissent in the most stupid or absolutist way possible leads you up all sorts of hysterical denunciations and misconstruals, but that is not anyone's fault but yours.

I certainly would not want to exclude corporate provision, but I doubt there would be much even in the most open market.

That profit is how a lot of private provision is motivated does not make it evil, stupid, bad or otherwise a poor way of doing things. Hence the extremely productive system we live in.

And implying, as you did, that private supply is somehow antithetical to quality is just dumb. It is public provision which has the more endemic quality issues. Not least because it faces an excessively "understanding" regulator.