Subject:
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Re: Rights, Who needs them? (was Re: Abortion...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 13 Nov 2000 09:43:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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1130 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> Scott A wrote:
> > From The LP
> > "To transfer control of education from bureaucrats to parents and teachers
> > and encourage alternatives to the public school monopoly, the Libertarian
> > Party would"
> >
> > With the best will in the world, how can individual parents and teachers
> > strategically plan a nation’s education? Governments can and plan for the
> > future and are able to direct focus to areas where there is a lack of skills
> > or ability.
>
> Scott, think this through, and give an answer: what superior power of
> decision making does the government (which is a collection of people)
> have that any other collection of people could have? What makes the
> legislatures and other government officials so much smarter than the
> rest of us?
You or I can only hope to assist our kids in the education path which they
choose. They can only make a choice from what is available. Educational
planners are there to predict the needs of your country.
At a low level, below are the aims of the Scottish Higher Education Funding
Council:
=+=
Aims
In allocating public funds, developing policies and providing advice to
Government, the Council aims:
To help the sector to address the needs of students, employers and society
across local, national and international communities
To work towards equal opportunity of access to high quality higher education
To encourage institutions to pursue continuous quality improvement and build
on their distinctive strengths in teaching and research, promoting diversity
of provision and beneficial collaboration
To achieve value for public money by seeking to make the best use of
available resources and securing accountability while recognising
institutional autonomy
=+=
SHEFC is an organisation which ensures education is both of a high stadanrd,
and suits the needs of the "market". Naturally, one could argue that
business should set the agenda, and overall it does. However, it is also the
remit of education to tackle problems which, perhaps, companies do not want
an answer to. I suppose this is where one should consider the needs of
general society more, and the role of universities in creating "experts".
Below, are the aims of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
Council (EPSRC):
(BTW - EPSCR funded my doctorate at a cost of, in today’s $, $200,000 over
3 years. This focused on defining certain gross pollutants moved from sewers
to watercourses during wet weather.)
=+=
Scope
The main focus of the General Engineering Programme is to support the health
of the academic engineering research base. A broad spectrum of research and
training is supported, from fundamental, generic research to applied
research and training in collaboration with industry. The Programme
complements the Engineering for Manufacturing Programme (EFM) which focuses
on wealth creation and the Engineering for Infrastructure, the Environment
and Healthcare Programme (EIEH) which focuses on quality of life issues.
Objectives
The objectives of the Programme are to:
develop and nurture the health of the engineering research base by
supporting high quality research across the engineering disciplines;
provide a balanced portfolio of research training to meet the UK’s long term
requirements for doctoral engineers;
maintain an effective interface with the EFM and EIEH Programmes, thereby
ensuring coherent support for engineering within EPSRC;
foster collaboration with EPSRC’s basic science and technology Programmes to
encourage effective pull-through of scientific advances into engineering.
=+=
The problems is that fundamental research can be very expensive, a little
risky and have no immediate use - so an companies will seldom support it.
>
> To me it is clear that the _only_ special power a government has is the
> power ceded to it by it's subjects,
Agreed
> and it only has the power to force
> it's subjects to cede power to it because it has so much power as to be
> able to force everyone to cede power to it ("let us govern you or we'll
> lock you up or blow you away.").
I disagree. I can vote for what ever agenda I wish. I do not, as far as I am
aware, live in a country with a heavy handed military - so there is no real
threat of them being unhappy with the result.
>
> Now it is true that any individual is not and can not be a master of
> everything.
Some wish to be(!)
> Therefore we do have to cede a certain amount of decision
> making to others, but where is there any guarantee that the people
> elected to government have any real ability to make those decisions?
If they don't have the qualities you want, vote them out. In the UK, at
national level, political "reshuffles" are not uncommon.
>
> > From The LP
> > "To transfer control of education from bureaucrats to parents and teachers
> > and encourage alternatives to the public school monopoly, the Libertarian
> > Party would"
> >
> > This would essentially move funds invested in state schools to subsidise the
> > private sector. Parents who could afford to move their children to a better
> > school could do so, those who could not would be left behind in the
> > underfunded public sector. This was an issue for state funded care in the UK
> > a few years ago, it was kicked into touch for the reasons I give. Further,
> > higher education system is largely privately funded(?), what is its product
> > like – I hear you IT revolution has been based considerably overseas skills?
>
> If our higher education system is so horrible, then why are huge numbers
> of non-Americans coming to our schools, especially at the graduate
> level?
Let us not confuse attendance levels with educational attainment. Just
because there is demand for a particular product - it does not mean it is
good (e.g. megeblocks version of Duplo). I can cite courses run in the UK
which are oversubscribed – but are useless in terms of educational.
Additionally, there are courses where employers are calling for good
graduates, but they are so undersubscribed by students that they run at a loss
> The reasons non-Americans are heavily involved in the IT
> revolution include:
>
> - more dedicated/industrious (or however you want to express it)
> - lack of enough people within the US
My point.
> - why not use the best wherever in the world they come from
This in another debate, I was talking about education, not the employment
market – I accept they are related. But I do agree, if a person has skills
to do a job better than anyone you have - give him the job.
>
> One reason I would suggest that the non-Americans who are involved in
> the IT revolution are more industrious is because there is a more
> competitive, freer market producing them. What percentage of US citizens
> go to US colleges? What percentage of Indian citizens go to US colleges
> (and then stick around in the US to get a job)?
But the question is why US citizens don't go to college? This is a genuine
question, I’d be interested in the answer.
>
> If non-Americans are so almighty in the IT revolution, how come the
> worlds largest software company is run by a guy who dropped out of
> Harvard and is most certainly not a non-American? (And lest you think he
> has no technical skill, or for that matter, real business skill, read
> about his early years, I wouldn't be surprised if the products of the
> company he started in High School are still plugging away telling the
> faceless masses when it is safe to proceed through intersections, read
> about how the program he wrote for the first PC ran the FIRST time it
> was loaded onto an actual machine having been written in his dorm room
> more than half a continent away from the machine it would run on, read
> about how he recognized the potential market which could be generated by
> the then largest computer company [again a distinctly American company]
> and decided that if they were confused as to who was writing operating
> systems, well, he would just get into that business [and look at the
> architecture of the computer that most of us are using, which was
> developed by that particular computer company]). (1)
I accept that this individual has performed well. But how did he get access
to Harvard? Ability to pay, ability to learn - or both?
That individual aside, I would prefer a system where entry into higher
education is based on ability to learn, not ability to pay. To do otherwise,
means young talents are being squandered.
Scott A
>
> I don't dispute that non-Americans supply much of the brain power which
> has fueled the computer age, but I will certainly claim that our country
> and it's governmental system definitely has a lot to do with the
> creation and pace of the computer age.
>
> (1) And lest you think that I think Bill Gates is a perfect saint, I
> certainly don't, but he didn't get where he is by luck or by force. He
> got there because however his mind works, somehow he is able to perceive
> better than almost anyone else in the world what people really want out
> of a computer. I remember how when Windows 95 was first being previewed
> and the Start menu and the task bar were pooh-poohed. Now I see a very
> similar thing on my Linux desktop. I can't even begin to describe how I
> feel about Lotus Notes and Lotus Wordpro compared to MS Outlook and MS
> Word (although I will grant that MS Word has a significant advantage in
> my case because I first used it on a MacIntosh several years before the
> Windows version would have all of the same capabilities).
>
> Frank
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Rights, Who needs them? (was Re: Abortion...
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| (...) Scott, think this through, and give an answer: what superior power of decision making does the government (which is a collection of people) have that any other collection of people could have? What makes the legislatures and other government (...) (24 years ago, 13-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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