Quote:
Originally Posted by lemit
Possibly denying education to those who don't do well but want to learn anyway?
I'm not sure. It seems that education (to be informed participants in Jeffersonian democracy) has always been defined as an inalienable right, and the best way to guarantee that it isn't alienated is to provide the funding for it. Guaranteeing fairness, as fairness is guaranteed in voting (failure is not the same as not trying), implies a certain level of control.
Can you see a form of privatized education that would provide that guarantee?
Thanks for the question. It made me think in an uncomfortable way, which I should be required to do more often.
--lemit
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Perhaps a per person scholarship to the school of their choice. My state already has a comprehensive scholarship funded by the lottery - I believe it can be used on private schools to some degree.
One idea behind our economic model is that the government doesn't really have the ability or intelligence (because it's impossible for one group of people to track all the factors) to directly guarantee it. By funding it, they create a sort of education welfare organization that doesn't care about efficiency or just does what it always has done and then spends any extra money on better cafeterias to attract brighter students...
Also, being the information age and all, It seems it would be impossible for a person to be as uneducated as people may have been in the past. Between TV, the internet, and advanced learning materials (which would only get better with more economic motive driving them) a person can basically learn anything they want to... to a pretty advanced level too. Then there is still the plain old library.
I remember training for a bank teller position when I was younger. The training consisted of a flashing a bunch of scenarios with other people that involved understanding all these rules about what kinds of things could be done with bank accounts and checks and bonds etc. If you answered wrong the person in the scenario became huffy or expressed that you let them get away with things that no one else did. The program lasted a few hours and taught everyone all these complex rules they needed to know about their new job. I remember wondering how come university wasn't this efficient at training people.
If the market drives it to become more efficient, that means cheaper, which means relatively speaking the government is paying more money to give people less knowledge.
The other issue is research and access to near state of the art technology and reasoning. However research is a monkey that secondary education may not be capable of carrying on it's back any more. I don't think it would turn into a situation where knowledge would be hoarded by private entities. The government could simply outlaw or nullify nondisclosure agreements with respect to education companies. A company could still sue for use of patented technology, but they wouldn't be able to stop their ex-employees from receiving offers to share information by the education companies.
