LessGovMrPrez

What? Whether it is the military or Sears it is still a job no less.

With all due respect, unless you didnt tell them you were a student, most if not all businesses will work with you, especially if you are in a college town. If you happen upon one that wont, then you walk away and go look for another one.


Well in regards to getting a job while in school? Hell ya I do. Unless of course, people cant multi-task at all. How are people able to work and go to a football game? Or a family gathering? Or raise a family? Its freakin college for crying outloud. You have 2 or 3 classes a day, usually in the morning and no classes on the weekends. Dont give me this BS statement that it cant be done. It all depends on how badly you want to do, what you have to, in order to get what you want.

As for the double jointed stuff, keep it.


Quote:
All this talk of government giving us everything is scary.

Ok, well what is a necessity then? And guess who gets to define it? Government. Guess who gets to take it away when they cant provide the funding necessary for all their "necessities" in life? Why not just put forth some extra effort on their own own part and do it their-self? Why do people need someone else holding their hand, patting them on the back telling them it will be ok?

"A government that can provide you with everything, is also one that can take it away."

Fong

We are talking here about education 16+ Mainly really 18+ because it is a discussion on University.

If you wish to discuss education up to the level of 16, I will be more then happy to oblige as a teacher who teaches 11-16 year olds, I am more then happy to rip into both our education systems, since they both work from the same premise.

Now if I remember rightly, like us, it is actually Illegal for a child not to go to school up to the age of 16? Isn't that right? It is a legal requirement for every child to go to school til the age of 16.

Education up to the age of 16, is basic, it doesn't open any doors for you, it also doesn't change your earning potential or your career choices. It is for all intents and purposes irrelevent to your life, beyond gaining access to further education.

For instance, when I left school the First company I worked for was interested in my Qualifications, because it was the only way they could judge I could read, write do arthimetic. The second firm I went to, didn't care about my qualifications, they were more interested in my 5 years of experience.

After I got my degree, that was a different matter, I have been working now for 20 years, and my degree is still referenced during times of looking for employment. It means something, not just in the esoteric sense, but in the very real sense of the amount I earn and the options that are open to me.

I said earlier something that you have not responded to, so I will pose a couple of questions to you instead.

Do you believe that the quality of education in a middle class area is the same as the quality of education within the inner city?

Would you be willing to send your child to a public inner city school, if you had another option?

Now if you are honest, you are going to reply No to both those questions.

Whose fault is that? Is that the individuals fault?

LessGovMrPrez

Wait what? University is college, not high school or 16 year olds. K-12 is Kindergarten through 12th grade. That is already paid for. What is this talk of 11-16 year olds?

Why is it illegal? Who made that rule/ Oh yeah the government.

What country are we talking about here? This isnt the US I presume b/c in the US school is funded all the way through 12th grade, which is 18 years old.

Well of course not. But once again....lol, this goes back to government funding of schoolsand parent involvement.

Well no I wouldnt, I dont even send mine to public or private, I homeschool mine....lol. But once again...lol, your problem isnt with me, it should be with the governments way of funding schools.

After all, the government is funding schools here, so if a school fails is that the people who are in its fault or the governments? You are assuming that parents are all involved with their childrens lives when they arent. So, you can fund all the schools you want, it still wont bring the standard of education up b/c it all goes back to the individuals involved in the system. Here in the US, which obviously we are not talking about, education is paid for K-12th grade. Inner city or not, students can still make the grades necessary to get them into college. We can discuss vouchers too. Wouldnt it be better for those same inner city school kids to have the option to go to a different school? The government doesnt want that option b/c they say it will hurt some schools, so instead we get kids in the inner city who are somehow less fortunate then others. Who is providing this environment? The government.

Well of course, who wouldnt answer no? They are generalized questions, nothing more. You gotta look deeper then a simple genarlized question. It is kind of like politicans talking about "change". Who is against change in general? Probably not alot of people. But when you start looking a little deeper and see what kind of change, then you get a little more clearer picture of what exactly they mean by "change".

It is both the individual as well as government actually. A mixture. The govenrment wont allow the people who want out of a bad precinct school to get a voucher to go to a better one b/c they say it will hurt the remaining kids at the other school. So nothing changes. Then you also have parents who could care less about their kids and so the kids dont care about themselves. How does the government stop that one? It cant. That is an individual problem that no government can fix.

Fong

I said this is a thread about University, which is 18+ education. I said if you wanted to discuss 11-16 year olds....pre-University....then I would be happy to oblige, perhaps in a different thread though?

That was the talk of 11-16 year olds. It was also quite clear in the part you quoted.

It wasn't a comment on whether it was good or bad, it was a comment to show that I was well aware that education was free up to that age.

Well University I said is 16+ because further education from 16-18 is a choice, and as I said earlier 80% of those who go for further Education, 16-18, go on to University. So it is easier to just group 16+ into the "University" tag. Whether the education is free or not doesn't matter since it is pretty much the same group of people.

As I said above I would happily debate the state of the education system in both our countries pre-University, but since you are not denying the state of the inner city public education system, nor are you denying the fact that it is not the individuals fault, then there is no need in this thread.

However, it has to be said that your choice of reason for the state of the public school system, isn't the defacto reason. There are many differing reasons as to why the school system fails so horribly, your choice is to blame finance, my personal choice is to blame the education system we present to our children.

To me Govenment funding is irrelevent. That is not the problem.

That however is neither here nor there, we have come to the point where you are freely admitting that it is not the fault of the individual for the state of the education system and you are freely admitting that the education is so rubbish that you wouldn't send your own children there.

Then when given the idea that anyone that can work through that system and actually get good enough grades to go to University, should at least by this point be given more of a helping hand then is currently offered, you reject it. Despite the fact that the person has already worked harder to get to this point. Someone works harder to get through the public school system, then if they wish to continue that education, they have to pay for it by going heavily into debt, while working a full time job.

Then if they fail to get past this system that is heavily weighted against them in the first place, they are seen as failures in our society and not only are they failures, but its their own fault too.

Even though they worked 9 times harder then the person born to a family with a little wealth, they are still the ones considered failures, because they didn't work 10 times harder.

The idea of Goverment and Society stepping in and evening the playing field is abhorrent to you.

Is it because you don't want to pay for it, or you don't like the idea of competition on an even playing field?

LessGovMrPrez

No that is not what I said, I didnt blame finance alone. I blamed the government itself and the family involvement, which is the inidivual side of it.

The government itself being involved is the problem.

You have misread what I wrote. I did blame both the individual and the government for our current situation.

Fong

No it is not.

As an individual I am not responsible for my parents actions or inactions. I cannot be held responsible for them. So it is not on the individual side of things, since the individual side of things in this debate is the Student.

That is opinion, not fact.

You incorrectly assigned individual blame to a person who has no control over the actions of others.

Where is the blame for the individual student?

That they didn't work hard enough? Despite you freely admitting that the system they are studying in requires far more work to succeed in; then the same system in other areas of the country?

You want to blame the individual because it suits your idealogy, but I can't see how you can blame individual students because their parents were not interested. How is that their fault?

janpor

Why isn't the system changed then? Here in Flanders they ask pupils to make choices...and those choices decide your future...
First of all in Belgium you have two types of higher education:
- University: with academic bachelor degrees and master degrees
- College (I looked it up in the Dictionary, but here it is different from a University) that provides professional bachelor degrees (3 years)

Highschool is divided in ASO, TSO, BSO and KSO.
- ASO: general education,if you graduate you probably go to University/College because you didn't learned specific skills for a job...
- TSO: general education but with a special attendance for jobs in the technical sectors, if you graduate you can find work because you learned specific skills, but most people still go to college/university
- BSO: You learn a skill (electrician, painter, baker,...) and after you graduate most people go to work.
- KSO: general education but with special attendance for the arts, most people after graduation go to a special academy later (conservatorium)

When you enter the highschoolsystem at age 12 everybody chooses a specific option: Sports, Science, Latin, Modern Languages, Baker, Butcher,...there are a lot of choices.
Most schools offer only one type of education (ASO,TSO,BSO,KSO)
But everybody gets a vast amount of Dutch, math, science, French, English, PE, art, religion (in public schools you have the choose of any religion, including atheïst),..This is called Middle School, you're in it for two years and like I said they offer a vast amount of courses so pupils can see in what they're good in or what intrests them.

At age 14 you have to choose a more specific option...
This choice depends in wich type (ASO,TSO,...) you're in.
In ASO they offer for example: Science, Greek-Science, Sciene-Languages (=French, English, German, Spanish), Sports-Science, Human Science-Arts, Human Science-Languages, Latin-Greek, Latin-Languages; Economy-Science; Economy-Languages, Economy-Latin; Economy-Greek,... and a lot of other choices... (it depends on the school and the net (catholic, public) they are in)
It doens't matter wich option you choose everybody has still a minimum of a vast amount of necessary subjects...if you choose Languages you get more hours of Dutch, French, English, German or Spanish then people in Science but people in Languages still have a minimum of 4hours of math/week.
When you go further in this system your choice becomes more and more specific: if you have choosen science at age 14 you can choose at age 16 again: will I have 8hours of math/week or 5 hours math/week and 3 hours of chemistry; if you have choosen anything with Languages you can choose between German/Spanish
I have to say if you made the choice at age 14 to follow a TSO, BSO or KSO-course and you want to go to ASO it is possible but than you will have to do the year over again in ASO

This choice of 14/16 decides later what you're going to do...
Some years now American officials come to see how our education system works...here the money is attatched to the child because everybody can choose it own school...
I think when the schooldistricts are away things will get better...

__________________
"Nos pays sont devenus trop petits pour le monde actuel, à l'échelle des moyens techniques modernes, à la mesure de l'Amérique et de la Russie aujourd'hui, de la Chine et de l'Inde demain. L'unité des peuples européens réunis dans les Etats-Unis d'Europe est le moyen de relever leur niveau de vie et de maintenir la paix. Elle est le grand espoir et la chance de notre époque. Nous aussi, nous allons vers notre but, les Etats-Unis d'Europe, dans une course sans retour."

Jean Monnet - Rome 1957

VoiceofReason

Why should the guy who does not go to a university but instead learns a trade pay for YOUR higher education which is suppose to get you higher earnings in the long run? It's an investment on your part, and YOU reap the benifits not him.

Fong

It is an irrelevent question to the debate.

This is the way the system is. We can't start debating hypotheticals of how a much better system might work and how we wouldn't need to pay for education if the world was different.

It isn't different. This is the way it is.

WHEN the system is changed, then we can debate whether we should change our minds on whether Education should be free, but up until that point, it is irrelevent to the debate what the system is like, it is this way, we have to deal with it, and free education is I believe the best option for doing that.

Fong

You are coming back now with arguments that were already discussed several pages ago.

Places like Britain that have a welfare state, gain greatly by people earning more money and paying more in Tax.

Even countries like America where the Welfare state is quite weak, you surely understand that the economic impact of a well educated populace who have degrees and earn good money is beneficial to the economy as a whole? Not only from the point of view of business that can find the people with the skills they need, but from a retail perspective of people who earn good money having more disposable income to spend.

The idea that the only person who reaps benefits is YOU is to ignore a great deal of benefit from someone who earns good money, which gaining a Degree will certainly have an impact on.