sophie
Break My Heart
At a micro level, maybe, but at a macro level more, better training ultimately means more jobs.
Is this the end of liberalism?
- Thread starter civman110
- Start date
- Status
At a micro level, maybe, but at a macro level more, better training ultimately means more jobs.
Akka
Moody old mage.
Still not my point.
(and anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's not as clear-cut as you make it sound)
(and anyway, I'm not saying you're wrong, but it's not as clear-cut as you make it sound)
That's a good analogy assuming that people will go into fields that require that specialist training. If I had gone to university and then still become a private soldier, it would have been four years (and a lot of money) down the drain, from an economic point of view. Your points about learning general skills make sense, but you learn all of those at work, and are then fundamentally producing rather than consuming - certainly from a tax point of view. I learned how to process information, come up with reasoned arguments, articulate my ideas, work together to accomplish tasks, stay motivated and see things through to completion on the hills in Brecon.
In a lot of fields, as I said, university education is much less about tangible skills and much more about signalling natural characteristics. If you spend four years learning to translate Latin poetry, you're unlikely to ever use that skill again, but you can say to an employer that you learned a difficult skill and learned to do it well, so you'll be able to learn whatever difficult skills the job requires and be good at those. That only works, though, if the process of being admitted to universities and going through them creates some sort of filter - whether by grade, institution or simply rejecting people - that allows you to say that.
Another side to the "4 more years" idea is that just because its 4 "more" does not mean "better." It depends largely on what you do in those 4 years, right? 4 more years of college might very well mean 4 more years of study/training etc., but it might come alongside 4 more years of smoking pot, getting drunk 3 nights a week, playing videogames 6 hours a day, staying up all night, sleeping until 1PM, wasting money, eating junk food... on and on in other words 4 years of entrenching bad habits. When I was in high school I got up at 630AM every morning (a good habit for an adult)... After 1 semester of college, I had to struggle to drag my sorry butt out of bed by noon.
Giving every teenager in America 4 years of unsupervised, state subsidized freedom does not prima-facie make everyone "more efficient." Which is why I like the idea of tackling some of that "specialized training" in high school, where the students have less freedom and more supervision. Its seems a much more "efficient" use of the education funding. I'm not saying High School needs to become Auto-shop trade school, but I am asking why can't High School kids learn job skills?... If it's about the training and not about the "paper" then why cant we do the training, whatever that may be, in High School instead of Advanced US History III, and Colonial era English Lit?
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Because that would require resources the high school education system does not have. It isn't just a matter of cutting courses, or anything small like that. It requires staff with the technical knowhow, it requires modern technology, and a host of other problems. My school has been good at hiding the cracks, but everyone knows that the new schedule designed for next year is to cover up for the fact that the school can't hire enough new teachers to replace the ones that have retiring in the past decade. Also, guess what- our school could not find a person with experience in Computer Science to teach the course. They found some random teacher who is only one chapter in the textbook ahead of her students; at least last year, the teacher took one course in college, even if it was outside her major. Half of our bathroom locks (atleast in the boy's room) are broken. The heater doesn't work for all floors, the computers have been there since 2003. We don't even have projectors in all rooms. I think like a good quarter of teachers have to rely on whiteboard, and an unlucky few teachers have to rely on the blackboard which doesn't erase well. And my school is well off. It is the typical middle class town school, and for now it can afford a semblance of normalcy. Pay is still good, the lack of modern technology isn't too burdensome under the current systems, and for now things aren't going to fall apart.
You say that the High schools do not have the resources, which raises a couple issues:
1. If the resources to upgrade/update/modernize/focus the High School Curriculum are lacking, then where would the resources for "free" college tuition come from?
2. You say that resources are lacking, then say that an unqualified teacher is teaching Comp Sci. Why not let him go and hire a competent Comp Sci Teacher instead since that is what you need? In fact why not let all the obsolete teachers go in favor of ones who are qualified to teach the new curriculum? I mean I think I know the answer, but it has nothing to do with a "lack of resources."
3. You say that "pay is good" but there is not enough resources to modernize the curriculum into something that would actually be useful to the students. That seems to be a little dysfunctional no? Why would pay be "good" in an otherwise inadequate school with insufficient resources? Kind of like a 4-12 NFL team with salary cap problems right?
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
Let me rephrase my statement. It isn't like high schools have no resources, and things do improve gradually, but it would require more resources than high schools currently have to update the system in time before new technology comes out that obsoletes the current improvement. I never said free college tuition was an answer. I'm just skeptical of the odds of "job training in high school".
And what resources the school does have is being used unwisely. We are getting solar panels for the school, despite a host of other issues that need to be fixed.
As for why unqualified teachers are being hired for the Comp Sci course- well I have no idea. Me and the school administration are not in cahoots. I don't know their thought process.
Final point- even if you could get free job training in high school, how would you decide who does trains for what? High schoolers don't have a clear picture of their future or what they want to do. What if you trained them in programs to be an engineer, and they really wanted to be a doctor?
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
A university education pushes a person's knowledge closer to the outer limits of human discovery. Those brought to the outer limits are more likely to have novel ideas instead of reinventing the wheel, those brought closer are more ready to accept novel ideas instead of finding them too alien.
This is good economics.
And we could employ a bunch of out of work psychologists to counsel students into being even more effective.
This is good economics.
Sounds like a bunch of job for some out of work engineers.
Yes, the college experience is vastly more taxing and students quickly find themselves unable to keep up with all their high school habits. Partying, btw, is not merely fun and catharthis but an incredibly educational transfer of knowledge. It's so efficient most people are terribly ignorant of its power. Deprive students of parties and you deprive them their education.
And we could employ a bunch of out of work psychologists to counsel students into being even more effective.
Sorry to bump this thread, but there was a pretty good article on The Cracked about this.
chijohnaok
King
I posted something in the Black Lives Matter thread however it has been suggested that it is more relevant to this thread.
Here is a link to that post:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14077097&postcount=693
Here is a link to that post:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14077097&postcount=693
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Great, and this thread had finally sunk deep enough..
In Civ 4 Leonard Nemoy quotes Ben Franklin when you discover the Liberalism "technology" as saying: "Any society that would sacrifice a little freedom to gain a little security, will deserve neither, and lose both."
I interpret that as what we now refer to as "Libertarianism"
"Liberal" nowadays just means Democrat or "Progressive". Liberalism just means "Progressivism"
I interpret that as what we now refer to as "Libertarianism"
"Liberal" nowadays just means Democrat or "Progressive". Liberalism just means "Progressivism"
In the context of this thread, it is clear that the OP was referring to the death of liberalism... by it's classical definition. Not defined by the label co-opted by a political party.
One definition of liberalism is: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties; specifically : such a philosophy that considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities (as those involving race, gender, or class)
Relevant to the discussion: liberty is a key component of liberalism (in theory). The American left associates itself with liberalism but when it opposes civil liberties, that is not a stance aligned with liberalism.
An example:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpres...ims-opposing-feminist-speaker-maryam-namazie/
The OP was clearly talking about the death of liberalism, but many posters took this to mean the death of the political left. Clearly, the political left is not dead. However, they seem to be moving away from the value of civil liberties.
One definition of liberalism is: a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties; specifically : such a philosophy that considers government as a crucial instrument for amelioration of social inequities (as those involving race, gender, or class)
Relevant to the discussion: liberty is a key component of liberalism (in theory). The American left associates itself with liberalism but when it opposes civil liberties, that is not a stance aligned with liberalism.
An example:
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpres...ims-opposing-feminist-speaker-maryam-namazie/
The OP was clearly talking about the death of liberalism, but many posters took this to mean the death of the political left. Clearly, the political left is not dead. However, they seem to be moving away from the value of civil liberties.
I think it is pretty clear that the OP was intending to reference what is generally understood as the political left in American politics as misguided as the post came to really identifying it.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
He really wasn't. He demonstrates this by not using that definition throughout the thread. It's not clear he even accepts that definition as valid, if he understands it.
CELTICEMPIRE
Zulu Conqueror
I love America but Americans are increasingly becoming overly offended and ungrateful for what they have. And to be clear this isn't just limited to the left.
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
It depends on your definition of liberalism. These days that seems to gravitate to socialist. Traditional liberalism, from Hume, Locke and Mills, is more a Republican thing.
J
At least I was in before the Locke.
gay_Aleks
from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!
Americans wouldn't recognize a socialist even if he started proclaiming the Communist Manifesto.
- Status
Similar threads
