Some clarification, please
Okay, somebody pointed out something in Ron Paul's platform to me which really makes no sense, which is his stance on home schooling. It's detailed on his own campaign page here.
Now, he is committed to supporting home schooling. Great. He wants to remove federal regulation of schools. Questionable to me, but consistent with his philosophy. Then he wants to use government regulation to make sure home school diplomas are accepted on parity with other school diplomas ... Say what?!
First of all, using federal regulations to ensure this is completely against the Libertarian ideal that he's campaigning under. He considers it an inappropriate use of federal regulations to ensure that minorities can get the same level of employment as non-minorities, even though race has nothing to do with job aptitude, but considers it perfectly appropriate to use federal regulations to ensure that people with unusual educations can get the same level of employment, even though education has everything to do with job aptitude? Yea, there's some logic.
Secondly, this goes against the Libertarian ideal in another way. Libertarianism is all about allowing the free market to do everything, but this actually REMOVES some of the positive power of the market over schooling. Schools, and school systems, are no longer as capable of distinguishing themselves by the quality of their education, because it no longer matters whether you had a good or a bad k-12 education. Just so long as you have a parent that claims you had a k-12 education, you're good. Admittedly, it will still effect your ability to actually DO a given job, and I suspect that, in the wake of this, jobs and universities would simply start ignoring diplomas altogether and work purely off of aptitude tests, thus making the quality of education still matter to those who are paying attention. However, I expect a lot of parents to not figure this out, and a lot of children to get screwed out of a proper education as a result.
Thirdly, forcing that level of recognition on home school diplomas is completely incompatible with removing regulations on home schooling. This country is full of crazy and/or stupid parents, who will honestly believe that the best thing for their children will be things like, say, not giving them any formal education at all, or teaching them that the world is flat and the only reason the oceans don't all spill off the world is by the power of Jesus. Sure, home schooled kids may tend to test pretty high right now, but that's only because we have regulations in place on what can be considered valid home schooling.
Admittedly, most of us already know Ron Paul is a bit crazy. However, this ridiculous lapse of logic is still pretty shocking to me.
Now, he is committed to supporting home schooling. Great. He wants to remove federal regulation of schools. Questionable to me, but consistent with his philosophy. Then he wants to use government regulation to make sure home school diplomas are accepted on parity with other school diplomas ... Say what?!
First of all, using federal regulations to ensure this is completely against the Libertarian ideal that he's campaigning under. He considers it an inappropriate use of federal regulations to ensure that minorities can get the same level of employment as non-minorities, even though race has nothing to do with job aptitude, but considers it perfectly appropriate to use federal regulations to ensure that people with unusual educations can get the same level of employment, even though education has everything to do with job aptitude? Yea, there's some logic.
Secondly, this goes against the Libertarian ideal in another way. Libertarianism is all about allowing the free market to do everything, but this actually REMOVES some of the positive power of the market over schooling. Schools, and school systems, are no longer as capable of distinguishing themselves by the quality of their education, because it no longer matters whether you had a good or a bad k-12 education. Just so long as you have a parent that claims you had a k-12 education, you're good. Admittedly, it will still effect your ability to actually DO a given job, and I suspect that, in the wake of this, jobs and universities would simply start ignoring diplomas altogether and work purely off of aptitude tests, thus making the quality of education still matter to those who are paying attention. However, I expect a lot of parents to not figure this out, and a lot of children to get screwed out of a proper education as a result.
Thirdly, forcing that level of recognition on home school diplomas is completely incompatible with removing regulations on home schooling. This country is full of crazy and/or stupid parents, who will honestly believe that the best thing for their children will be things like, say, not giving them any formal education at all, or teaching them that the world is flat and the only reason the oceans don't all spill off the world is by the power of Jesus. Sure, home schooled kids may tend to test pretty high right now, but that's only because we have regulations in place on what can be considered valid home schooling.
Admittedly, most of us already know Ron Paul is a bit crazy. However, this ridiculous lapse of logic is still pretty shocking to me.