The competition for Harry Reid

[Requia ☣]

I'm looking over the Harry Reid race, and it appears they went full metal crazy.  In addition to the usual withdraw from the UN and abolish the department of education nonsense, this woman wants to privatize medicare.

She wants to replace a system that has a 97% money to payout ratio with a private system that will spend 5 times as much on administration.

Oh God, her wikipedia article gets worse.  She wants to abolish the tax code,

And she started ranting about deregulating offshore drilling in the middle of of the oil spill.

If she wins I get to have this woman on CSPAN *and* I'm rid of Harry Reid.

[Disco Pickle]

In the interest of reasoned and intellectual discourse, I'll ask your opinion on this:

OTHER than desegregation of the school system, what other great steps has the dept of education accomplished since its inception?

what do you say to the fact that education levels have fallen across the country since its inception and the fact that we're
way behind other industrialized nations in education?

do you believe standardized testing as mandated by the Fed are beneficial and a good measure of a child's ability to learn?

how do you reconcile the lowering of the bar to meet the lowest common denominator of student (I.E. passing students so they can stay in the same class with their peers)

what would you change to address the literacy rate among college age students within the current framework of the dept of edumacation?

Truly, I am curious and would love to have a reasoned talk about it, as I also believe that the Federal Dept of Education has failed in ways that a more local, state run or community run group would have become much more competitive.

I'm not saying abolish everything..  but the mandates that bind the hands of teachers and administrators, that give parents no say in the form of their children's educations.. 

I'd really love to hear the other side of this from someone who's passionate about their position, without ad hominem.

[Requia ☣]

Killing the dept of education is part and parcel of ending all federal funding for schools.  States already have the option of ignoring the federal gov when it comes to education if they don't want the money.

Also, integration of the schools was 20 years before the dept of education was founded.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Besides desegregation, we need central oversight of the education system to avoid things like Kansas teaching Creationism or Texas teaching that America was founded as a Christian theocracy. The Fed sucks at everything, but somebody has to make sure an education from California is as valid as one from Vermont. If you leave control to States or, God help us, local school boards, there will be all kinds of crazy shit being taught to American kids.

[Disco Pickle]

Killing the dept of education is part and parcel of ending all federal funding for schools.  States already have the option of ignoring the federal gov when it comes to education if they don't want the money.

Yeah, I've never heard of a state rejecting federal funding for education..  and this could honestly be my lack of knowledge on the issue but I'm really beginning to research this issue..   currently dating an elementary education major and the shit she tells me that the DOE mandates sounds like a bunch of bull shit.  I'm trying to talk her into taking her degree and using it in the private sector as she wont have nearly the out of pocket expenses the DOE requires (yearly fingerprints??  why not just run the fingerprints she paid $180 for last year)

Also, integration of the schools was 20 years before the dept of education was founded.

thanks for the clarification..  I admit I didn't do the research before I posted.  That will not happen again.

[Disco Pickle]

Besides desegregation, we need central oversight of the education system to avoid things like Kansas teaching Creationism or Texas teaching that America was founded as a Christian theocracy. The Fed sucks at everything, but somebody has to make sure an education from California is as valid as one from Vermont. If you leave control to States or, God help us, local school boards, there will be all kinds of crazy shit being taught to American kids.

Isn't that what accreditation accomplishes?  I have to admit my bias here for honesty's sake..  I'm not worried about math and science..  the evidence put forth in those fields will be a driving force for all but the most heavily indoctrinated..  I firmly believe the children of the 70's and 80's are moving away from religious indoctrination at a steady enough pace to have it moved from the group think mind within the next 15-20 years..   I'm more worried about history, politics and economics and the way it is taught..  Are you telling me that being taught that we to go into WWI is a good thing in our national interest?  That the treaty of Versailles was a good thing?  That teaching our children that the reason we went into WWII was because we HAD to take out Hitler (and not mentioning the fact that the second front against Russia was already guaranteeing his downfall) or that we only declared war after Pearl Harbor even though we had sanctions against Japan long before they attacked us?  Since the Fed is so concerned about Education, why hasn't there been a class added to the curriculum mandated that teaches children about currency, capital, and debt, it's uses and abuses??  If this had been something we brought our children up learning in schools, we would likely have less of a debt problem than we have now..  (speculation is speculation, I know..)

Secondary to that, the text book writers write new books every single year that add only what we've learned..  um..  within that year.. but charge the same price for a brand new book, draining your bank account or driving up the price of student loans and what state governments have to pay for those books..   does every state use the same text book?  then how are we guaranteeing our children aren't being taught something different from children in other states?  they're not..  it's a profit motive.

I'm delving into the realm of private, university education here and I realize that..  but I can't help but think it's all a little bit linked..

this should have really probably gone into rants..  I've had this bottled up for a long time..  but since I don't share my thoughts anywhere it has all come out here.

It isn't personal, but I'd love to hear another perspective..   unlike some other libertarians, I really am receptive to new ideas..

I'd still like someone to address the questions in my first response.

FACT: I've been drinking this evening, and I apologize if this rambles on.. and on..  and on..

[Thurnez Isa]

I'm not worried about math and science..  the evidence put forth in those fields will be a driving force for all but the most heavily indoctrinated..  I firmly believe the children of the 70's and 80's are moving away from religious indoctrination at a steady enough pace to have it moved from the group think mind within the next 15-20 years.. 

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/99153999.html?showAll=y&c=y

It's going to heat up down south... we're already losing ground in Texas and according to some right wing blog Tennessee is next. Be prepared for a brutal war of attrition. Every time someone pronounced them dead they just keep coming back.

I'm not meaning to join the debate Vrtig0 here though. I'm not American and much of your concerns deal with American federal politics and every country has a different bureaucracy and therefore different challenges.
Though I will say if I was by some act of divine providence you guys made me American presidente (refuse to to be president) your military spending would be cut in half and lot, and I mean lot, more would be delegated to education, including post secondary. There would be also a lot more prostitutes around the white house.

[Disco Pickle]

your military spending would be cut in half

half isn't enough..  it's already some obscene amount of GDP and other than the countries we supply military hardware to, we can expect no
international threats to possibly defeat us..

It's a few very powerful people making a lot of money selling expensive, RnD tech to other very powerful people and governments..

and using tax dollars to do the RnD on really unnecessary equipment.. 

no one has matched us since the 80's and if anyone has, it's because we sold them the tech.

but that is really for another thread.

[Thurnez Isa]

we can expect no
international threats to possibly defeat us..

You obviously don't know about our Canadian Moose Cavalry do you?

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

I'm not worried about math and science..  the evidence put forth in those fields will be a driving force for all but the most heavily indoctrinated..  I firmly believe the children of the 70's and 80's are moving away from religious indoctrination at a steady enough pace to have it moved from the group think mind within the next 15-20 years.. 

Though I will say if I was by some act of divine providence you guys made me American presidente (refuse to to be president) your military spending would be cut in half and lot, and I mean lot, more would be delegated to education, including post secondary. There would be also a lot more prostitutes around the white house.

If you want more money for schools then start teaching creationism, but demand that all the students families pay a tithe to the school. If the family refuses to pay their tithe to the Holy School of the lord Jesus Christ then their child gets the heathen course about monkeys and Darwin.
But in all honesty, throwing money at the schools doesnt fix them, we need some sort of reform.

[Disco Pickle]

You obviously don't know about our Canadian Moose Cavalry do you?

thanks for reminding me that this is all..  ALL of it..


really just very absurd.


sleep now.

[the last yatto]

DOE didn't prevent Texas from rewritting history and I'm not sure they will prevent Dan Schruender from being in charge of school policy. Besides signing the checks what do they really do?

[Requia ☣]

Nothing, they don't even cause the problems, that's capitol hill fucking up our schools, the DOE just gets stuck with that policy.

[the last yatto]

So they just want to remove the middleman?
I was hoping for anarchy

[Cain]

The problem is while there may be good reasons for wanting to remove the DOJ's say over the school cirriculum (historical studies, have shown that a national cirriculum was one of the main tools in forging a national identity in the late 19th/early 20th century, for example, with all the idiocy that entails) it's that a Republican is proposing it, and I for one find it impossible to believe in the good intentions of the GOP, because they don't have any.  They're a party of oligarchs run on spite and disenfranchisement, and that attitude informs their every policy.