Ah, the voice of reason. I agree about saving the planet too. The world's population needs to be about halved, if the present standard of living is to become universal. Using condensing boilers and not using plastic bags wont cut it.
Andy
Why should that be an objective?
Justice !
Justice != Equality
Equality != Justice
Equality of opportunity !
Mr Cap, you made that up.
We don't want any of that socialist filth on here mate :-)
:-)
True, but already food is becoming short because the developing world is increasingly sharing our tastes. Once they also want one Chelsea tractor and one runabout/family + 3 holidays/year, something's got to give and I suspect it will be us. Wont bother me - which is why I wont waste my money on a new boiler - but remember you were warned here first ! ;-)
lol
There is equality of opportunity in the sense that everybody is able to make their own opportunities. However, the opportunities are going to be different for different people, because opportunity is an individual thing.
No, food is already on the rise because of increasing demands from the East + India are producing a car for £1000. True, you need a little foresight, rather than burying your head in the sand but it's not simply guessing.
Andy
Inevitably there will be variations, but as a society you can either try and even them out, as in having all schools attaining similar standards or maintain privilege. I prefer a system where each individual stand or falls by their own endeavours, primarily because it is fairer but also for the more practical reason that it helps reduce conflict, which is frequently caused by a justified sense of injustice. What's the point of living a life of luxury when you are scared to walk the streets ?
Well.... I don't have a particular belief in the concept of "society". It's a nebulous term used to slippery shoulder personal responsibility elsewhere.
I don't see schools having different standards as an issue at all. There should be schools offering different ranges of educational content appropriate to the abilities of their pupils. It's an issue of suitability, not of privilege.
I agree
True, provided that everybody understands that those are the rules of the game.
The question is whether that really is injustice.
An arrangement where the educational diet and means of measurement are uniform is likely to result in conflict.
There will be a market for so many people able to do advanced maths, so many doing civil engineering, so many doing management of childrens' playgrounds, so many mending cars and so on. The researcher doing advanced maths may be doing work that will provide the others with a new means of information access that will help them do their work and for which they are willing to pay. Equally, he may not have the skills or time to fix his car so pays the mechanic to do it.
It's of no value to arrange for the mechanic to do advanced calculus if he's going to struggle with it, or for the researcher to take engines apart if he can't work out how to fit them back together. That's simply banging square pegs into round holes and goes nowhere.
So the argument is really one of how much time and effort coupled with ability does each want to invest at the start of their working life and during its course, and what is then involved in achieving the expected standard of living.
The latter is defined by what others are able and willing to pay for it.
So then the question becomes one of what is the degree to which the knobs are artificially turned to alter the natural behaviour of the market. Turn them a bit, and those with the ability to offer their services elsewhere will do so. Turn them a lot and the whole thing falls apart as it did in the former Warsaw Pact and is in southern Africa right now.
The answer is that you leave, like people have been and are in countries where social engineering by the incompetent and corrupt takes place.
No, it just shifts responsiblity from simply looking after number one, to also looking to the welfare of those around you. Even the most primitive people understood this but sadly we have forgotten.
I agree, once a child ability has been gauged. I was thinking more of Primaries, where the standards are very diiferent and they should not rely simply on the quality of the Head teacher.
I believe so. I would like to think that the children of those parents who don't give a fig, like the couple leaving Sainsburys the other day, the mother pushing a pushchair and the Grant Mitchell look-a-like saying loud enough for all to hear, ' What's for f*****g lunch "? The child's got no chance left on their own.
That's all true of course, but I'm a great believer in the fact that MOST children have a talent, something I was convinced about when listening to the apparently hapless, discussing their odds in the bookmakers. It's frequently a question of engaging their interest, not ability.
The market alone, is a very cruel place because all the power lies in the hands of very few individuals. Whilst they deserve a fair return for both their invention and risk, they should not be allowed to treat people like slaves, which has always required the implication of law. Not only that, it's makes no economic sense, because without customers, no business can thrive. The rich are once more getting richer and the poor are increasingly living on credit, because uneducated to the wider needs of society, greed begins takes hold.
Or to a place where the absence of law, allows them to screw their fellow man to their heart's content.
Incorrect. It is perfectly possible to take responsibility for oneself and in addition to consider the needs of others. The key point is that everybody should consider what they are able to do for themselves *first* before considering what others should be doing for them. The former scales, while the latter does not, leading to an apathetic fatalism. Self sufficiency should not be confused with looking after number one to the detriment of others.
The greater factor is the quality and involvement of the parents. Again it comes back to the misguided notion that "society should provide". It can't and it won't. Failing schools are almost always those in which the parents are not engaged because they think that the school should be bringing up their children for them, where they don't participate because they don't know how and where the head teacher is not providing the leadership to staff, children and parents.
The head teacher makes an enormous difference to that and should be hired, empowered and fired on that basis. It is far more important to do that than to apply some set of uniform standards which are almost certainly uniformly not helpful. Why do you think that National Curriculum has had such lukewarm reception? The other key factor is pupil/teacher ratio. This should never exceed 15:1 and is the key reason why the private sector is successful in education. There is much discussion about village schools and their closure. Often these are ticking the two boxes of small class sizes and involved parents. They are successful, but of course expensive in comparison to larger scaled schools. The latter, as exemplified by the comprehensive system as well, have become large, faceless places where people are lost rather than involved - the replacement of "community" by "society". It would be better to double the expenditure on primary education in order to operate class sizes of 15 rather than 30. Even better still would be to remove central and local government from the delivery of it, providing funding only.
That's an issue with that particular individual. The question is why is he behaving like that. THe answer is essentially that he is not taking responsibility for himself and his family and assuming that "society" will do it for him. The injustice here is that he is not being put in a position where he has to do that.
Of course. The mistake is the belief that they should be measured against the same ability scale. Unfortunately people confuse ability with academic ability. The two are not the same.
It was ever thus.
So the knob is turned a very tiny amount to achieve that, and only that.
Exactly. This is the main regulating factor, not the imposition of regulation.
The concept of "wider needs of society" doesn't really exist. Let's assume that a proportion of the wealth that I create is set aside in the form of taxation in all its forms. I know that I could manage that money better myself in terms of buying healthcare, education and so on far better than central government can. Nonetheless, I do recognise that people have different requirements and abilities to pay during their lifetimes and because of their personal circumstances, so it is reasonable to have some level of redistribution by means of taxation or better,insurance. The question then is what is the most effective way to manage that. I tend to think that the closer to the funding source, the better. Translated, this means that I would far rather taxation went to locally funded education and healthcare than via a centralised pot with all of the wastage and poor management that that entails. It replaces the concept of "society" with the concept of "community".
That happens only to the degree to which the fellow man agrees to be screwed. The greater question is why isn't the "fellow man" making his own arrangements......
I didn't say it wan't. " to ALSO looking to.... others "
The key point
I fundamentally disagree with that. If an individual action is to the detriment of society as a whole, then you shouldn't do it. Obviously there are acts, like owning a car that is harmful but if there is a consensus, that it's a price worth paying then it becomes acceptable.
True parental support is important, but in lots of cases, it's simply doesn't materialise and therefore the only hope for those children, and there are ever more of them, because previously educationally deprived children are now becoming ill-educated parents.
Class size is largely immaterial, it's about ethos and adopting a zero-tolerance attitude to misbehaiviour and dispution IRRESPECTIVE of the attitude of the parent. Good parents will support the Head, bad parents will oppose, even threaten them and that is also increasingly becoming a problem. Unless we collectively back teachers, against these troublemakers, everyone suffers.
He was never given the tools to be a father because his father was probably absent. If we don't collectively address this parental neglect, it will only get worse.
I agree much of the distribution is inefficient, the rest is simply terminology. You clearly accept the principle.
If that was true we wouldn't have needed to abolish slavery, introduce the factory act or even, dare I say, the health and safety legislation.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree ! ;-)
Andy
Telling the disadvantaged to pull their socks up when we know full well they don't have any socks (and will be prevented from ever having any by a near vertical playing field) is wicked. I'm sure you regard yourself as a self made man but, if you're honest, you probably had the best of all head starts, a middle class family who valued learning.
I know. THe question is how.
Notwithstanding that the concept of "society" is meaningless, it is far more effective to think of this in a much closer to home way. The principle is simple. I should be able to do whatever I like, provided that it doesn't impinge on the equal right of the next person to do what they like.
Concensus is often bullshit. This is why we have elections. Owning a car isn't harmful. The issue is how one uses it.
Then this is a matter of leadership from the school and education of the parents.
It's *highly* material. Make a visit to a selection of private primary schools. The difference is staark
That becomes unnecessary with proper leadership and small class sizes. The correct level of attention is there.
Very difficult to do in isolation. Both the parents and the school need to be giving the child the same messages.
Collectivism is a poor substitute for individual responsibility and takes one back to the nebulous concept, "society".
It's a circular argument in any case, as you highlighted earlier.
"Collectively" doesn't come into it. At some point, the guy needs to take responsibility for himself and for his family. The question is how to make that happen. There are numerous possible carrots and sticks to achieve it, with the carrots usually being more effective.
I accept a principle that there should be some level of safety net in a civilised country. However, it should be small and the state's involvement in it, infinitessimally small. In general, people should be encouraged to manage their own affairs by reducing the tax burden. That also means taking a lifetime view of what they are doing as an individual including making appropriate investments at the right times in order to fund their needs and lifestyle rather than assuming that the state should do it.
Globally speaking, we haven't done any of those.......
No. The private school is better because it has strict guidelines, firmly applied and by definition, supportive parent. Those are the criteria we need for all schools, excluding those parents that don't accept the principle. It's the only way was will reverse falling standards. t
By the way you may not like the idea that we're all on this planet and act interactively, you can describe it how you like, but it's a fact of life.
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