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Well, there's probably one of those for every one hundred fifty of the other.

What a fantastic return on investment that is.

ruveyn

what would you suggest as a reasonable alternative?

Exactly.



That's because the former is less likely to be true than the latter, these days. The actual racists have mostly died off, while "we need more welfare and fewer jobs" Brown is likely to be the next governor of California.

Only if you take the strictest possible definition of racism and the loosest possible definition of socialism. Hell, even most self-professed "socialists" here in the States aren't actually leftist enough to match any reasonable definition of socialism, whereas racial animus (if not outright racism) is quite common on the American Right.

I find it curious that a false accusation in one direction is apparently orders of magnitude more offensive than a similar false accusation in the other direction. I would speculate that it has something to do with MP's hypothesis that "conservatives can't take what they dish out."

If reasonable is the operative word you're not gonna get a satisfactory answer.

Care to qualify this with something resembling logic?



Actually, no. It's because being called a socialist is nothing to be offended about.

There's always homeschooling and autodidacticism.

Or private schooling. Schooling sold as a commodity in a market place.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 24 Oct 2010, 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'd think that due to the similar social situation that even with private schooling the focus isn't on education as much as it is in homeschooling, autodidacticism, or even tutoring. There may be more emphasis to seeing a return on investment in a private school than in a public school, but it is likely to be - as with all businesses I've worked with so far - a return on investment in paper only where the criteria for grading the school's effectiveness get maximized by the finagling of statistics or the over-prioritization of criteria which are supposed to be indicative of more than just the criteria itself.

The question then is, why do the moderates side with the conservatives and not with the liberals on this? You're welcome to your conspiracy theories, but the real likelihood is that the moderates are correct.


That too.

While it is clear that the public schools need a lot of work, the alternatives are far worse. Home-schoolers often end up poorly socialized and poorly educated, b/c the parents fail to test their kids and fail to make sure that they have social experiences outside of the family; putting schooling entirely in private hands is even worse, giving you a nation like Haiti where the majority of people are functionally illiterate b/c they can't afford to send their kids to school.

Our schools might not be the best, but at least we turn out people who are mostly literate, and *all* kids get at least the chance to be better educated if they're willing to apply themselves. It's hard to be an autodidact if you can't read - even Frederick Douglass was taught how to read by his master's wife.

Also, it's pretty hard to argue that 'money won't help' when you have moldy textbooks that are decades old and schools that have no cooling or heating. While unlimited money will not help, there are plenty of places where more money would.

I tend to agree that homeschooling is likely the best given the very high teacher/student ratio. However, the high teacher/student ratio also makes it economically unfavorable; it takes a large additional commitment in time that most parents aren't willing to make - indeed, that working parents may not be able to make.

Private schooling does seem to work better than public schooling; private schools generally produce students that ultimately have more success in life, despite the fact that the average private school teacher makes much, much less than the average public school teacher.

Pure market based private schooling might result in an undereducated population because of the inability of some parents to afford good schools. However, a voucher system would allow all students to be able to afford a school selected by their parents, which would combine most of the benefits of both systems.

voucher will only work if the private schools are forbidden from increasing their tuition to compensate (as has happened with universities and student loans), AND if the vouchers are variable-value so that (for instance) poorer families aren't shunted into religious institutions against their will (as is currently happening in D.C, since the religious private schools are cheaper than the secular private schools).

What conspiracy theory? All I really claim is that conservatives are much faster to act outraged or complain about bias than liberals are, and that conservatives have been more successful in how they frame issues than liberals have. Neither of those requires any sort of conspiracy.

As to the moderates: America is more or less a center-right nation, so our "moderates" are still more allied with the right than with the left. Besides that, conservatives have been quite successful in framing issues in a particular way; to the point that a lot of liberals are willing to accept the conservative framing of issues. The main exception to this is in the abortion debate, where each side frames the issue in its own way and refuses to even discuss the matter from the other side's framework. No one will call themselves either anti-choice or anti-life, but liberals and conservatives both generally accept the "big government vs small government" framework, rather than, say, a "social welfare vs corporate welfare" framing, which I would argue is a much more accurate reflection of the different economic policies promoted by our two major parties.


I would think it is something to be offended about. Socialism is a horrible ideology. Politically speaking, it is responsible for the deaths of millions in Russia and China and the continued oppression of millions in Cuba and North Korea. Economically speaking, having socialist views just indicates that one is out of touch with reality and utterly ignorant of basic economic theory. Being called a socialist is a terrible slur, but since the right wing in America has been screaming "Socialist!" non-stop for close to a century it has lost much of its sting, at least to some people.

It's already been said, but I'd like to reiterate that being called a socialist is a whole lot less pejorative than being called a racist, so I think it's eminently reasonable to come down harder on the one that the other. "Racism" is such a polarizing an stigmatized word that the mere accusation of it is enough to seriously ruin lives and derail careers; being falsely accused of it is almost tantamount to being falsely accused of child molesting, even if you're acquitted the damage is done.