Home Schooling in Pictures!

[LazyBoy]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

Let people accept consequences for their decisions. I do not see any problem with letting people with degrees in clinical psychology, miscellaneous fine arts, United States history, library science, or architecture accept the consequences of their choices. Let them accept their fate as unemployed for being so gullible as to believe that they could "do what they wanted to do" and still put food on the table. It seems like they wasted 5 or 6 years getting their 4-year degree in a field that is either largely irrelevant or way overpopulated. Did nobody tell them that getting a degree in fine arts is essentially a complete waste?

This is all true. But they're using loans guaranteed by the government and the taxpayers are the ones not getting paid back. So I see the government and the voters as complicit in the problem. I am not saying that borrowers are not responsible. But it's another class of loans where no one's considering risk.

[aaron]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

As I said, good luck on reform or change. Knowing a better way to educate and getting political support for it are two separate things. You will never have a voting public that is knowledgable enough to create any system that is optimal for anything. They will always be swayed this way and that due to vocal interests. I, for one, think that is just fine--you get what your ignorance deserves. Even though this does tend to cause severe misallocations of resources, such as is highlighted by the situation unfolding in Chicago, this is the system we live in where every single person has an asshole, an opinion, and a vote.

Ignorance is the problem.
The solution?

Everybody should go to college; it should be part of basic education, just like K-8.

[Ghent12]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

This is all true. But they're using loans guaranteed by the government and the taxpayers are the ones not getting paid back. So I see the government and the voters as complicit in the problem. I am not saying that borrowers are not responsible. But it's another class of loans where no one's considering risk.

You are quite right. The list of pernicious influence by the government is quite large, especially in education.

[Ghent12]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

Ignorance is the problem.
The solution?

Everybody should go to college; it should be part of basic education, just like K-8.

I seriously hope you're joking.

[aaron]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

As a civilization declines, intellectual pursuits become more and more of a luxury. Only the wealthy will be able to afford an education for their children. We have been here before.

[aaron]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

Why not? We live 20 or 30 years longer than "before". What is the harm in an extra 4 years of schooling? There is certainly a lot of new math, biology, technology, 'financial wizardry', etc that did not exist "before".

Is it reasonable to expect a 21st century work force if citizens have only an 18th century education?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

Why not? We live 20 or 30 years longer than "before".

No, we don't. We survive infancy and childhood more often than before, and maybe we get a second shot after a heart attack. People who escaped heart attack and infant disease lived until their 70s or 80s 6,000 years ago, and so they do today.

There was never a time when everybody dropped dead at 25, or 30, or 50. Hell, if "life expectancy" was 25 in the 1890s, then why is Besse Cooper still kicking today at 116?

Plato? 84
Newton? 84
Ramesses II? 91
Galileo? 77
Franklin? 84
Augustus Caesar? 78
Charlemagne? 72
Justinian I? 82
LouisXIV? 77
Marco Polo? 70

Even daring and drunk horse warrior, sleep outside Ghengis Kahn himself, made it to 65.

I hate the myth that we're living decades longer now.

[BadJuju]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

then why is Besse Cooper still kicking today at 116?

On that note, Besse Cooper was born in the county I live in now.

[gnk]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

South Korea has its own problem, and it leads the OECD countries in graduation rate.

Skip College is Top Advice for World-Beating Koreans

I think we're entering a new era of structural unemployment. Add in mechanization/robotics, free trade that involves countries with lower environmental and employment regs and lower salaries, etc...

The "my children will have a better life" meme is overplayed. How much better can it get? How much of a better job, bigger house, bigger car, etc...?

That kind of progression is impossible to maintain for everyone on the planet at the same time, especially for the OECD countries that are now competing with the rising (formerly) "third world."

[jiimbergin]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

No, we don't. We survive infancy and childhood more often than before, and maybe we get a second shot after a heart attack. People who escaped heart attack and infant disease lived until their 70s or 80s 6,000 years ago, and so they do today.

There was never a time when everybody dropped dead at 25, or 30, or 50. Hell, if "life expectancy" was 25 in the 1890s, then why is Besse Cooper still kicking today at 116?

Plato? 84
Newton? 84
Ramesses II? 91
Galileo? 77
Franklin? 84
Augustus Caesar? 78
Charlemagne? 72
Justinian I? 82
LouisXIV? 77
Marco Polo? 70

Even daring and drunk horse warrior, sleep outside Ghengis Kahn himself, made it to 65.

I hate the myth that we're living decades longer now.

Thanks, one of my pet peeves is the total misunderstanding of life expectancy by almost everyone. You are totally correct. I have tried to point this out every chance I get. In fact beginning in the 90s, actuaries were not even taught life expectancy since it is so totally useless in almost all circumstances (I do not know if it has been added back into the syllabus.

[Ghent12]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

Thanks, one of my pet peeves is the total misunderstanding of life expectancy by almost everyone. You are totally correct. I have tried to point this out every chance I get. In fact beginning in the 90s, actuaries were not even taught life expectancy since it is so totally useless in almost all circumstances (I do not know if it has been added back into the syllabus.

Well these myths are very hard to extinguish and are often used by political figures for their own ends. For instance, Michael Moore likes to perpetuate that the US life expectancy duration is somehow connected to our health care system. Hell, there is no international standardized way of calculating life expectancy because so much depends upon infant mortality and that is determined individually by each country using, in some cases, vastly different criteria.

[jiimbergin]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

Well these myths are very hard to extinguish and are often used by political figures for their own ends. For instance, Michael Moore likes to perpetuate that the US life expectancy duration is somehow connected to our health care system. Hell, there is no international standardized way of calculating life expectancy because so much depends upon infant mortality and that is determined individually by each country using, in some cases, vastly different criteria.

true, in the US if a bably takes one breath it is considered a live birth. In some countries if the baby dies in the first 30 days it is not considered a live birth, and there are many variations in between.

[DSpencer]

Re: Home Schooling in Pictures!

Why not? We live 20 or 30 years longer than "before". What is the harm in an extra 4 years of schooling? There is certainly a lot of new math, biology, technology, 'financial wizardry', etc that did not exist "before".

Is it reasonable to expect a 21st century work force if citizens have only an 18th century education?

Is it reasonable to expect people that can barely read, write or do basic math to learn and make use of complex math, biology and technology concepts?