That depends on the parents. Yes, many parents (including mine and, presumably, yours) have the best interests of the child at heart, and have the knowledge and ability to be able to serve those interests quite well.
This is not, however, true of all parents. There’s no entrance exam for parenthood. Thus:
Some parents are directly abusive to their children (including: many parents who abuse alcohol and/or drugs)
Some parents are total idiots; even if they have the best interests of the child at heart, they have no idea what to do about it
Some parents are simply too mired in poverty; they can’t afford food for their children, never mind schooling
Some parents are, usually through no fault of their own, dead while their children are still young
Some parents are absent for some reason (possibly an acrimonious divorce? Possibly in order to find employment?)
An education bureaucrat, on the other hand, is a person hand-picked to make decisions for a vast number of children. Ideally, he is picked for his ability to do so; that is, he is not a total idiot, directly abusive, dead, or missing, and he has a reasonable budget to work with. He also has less time to devote to making a decision per child.
That’s like claiming that bicycling is better than driving cars, as long as “driving cars’ includes cases where the cars are missing or broken.
If the parents are missing, dead, abusive, or total idiots (depending on how severe the “total” idiocy is), they can be replaced by adoptive or foster parents. You would need to compare bureaucrats to parents-with-replacement, not to parents-without-replacement, to get a meaningful comparison.
A question: How many people are so attached to being experts at parenting that they would rather see children jobless, unhappy, or dead than educated by experts in a particular field (whether biology or social studies)? Those are the people I worry about, when I imagine a system in which parents/government could decide all the time what their children learn and from what institution. For every parent or official that changes their religion just to get children into the best schools, willing to give up every alliance just to get the tribe’s offspring a better chance at life, and happy to give up their own authority in the name of a growing child’s happiness, there are many, many more who are not so caring and fair, I fear.
Experts in a field are far more likely to want to educate children better BECAUSE the above attachment to beliefs, politics, and authority is not, in their minds, in competition with their care for the children (or, at least, shouldn’t be, if those same things depend upon their knowledge). So, rather than saying we trust business, government, or one’s genetic donors, shouldn’t we be trying to make it so that the best teachers are trusted, period? Or, am I missing the point?
A question: How many people are so attached to being experts at parenting that they would rather see children jobless, unhappy, or dead than educated by experts in a particular field (whether biology or social studies)?
That’s a very odd question because you’re phrasing it as a hypothetical, thus forcing the logical answer to be “yes, being taught by an expert is better than having the child dead”, but you’re giving no real reason to believe the hypothetical is relevant to the real world. If experts could teleport to the moon, should we replace astronauts with them?
So, rather than saying we trust business, government, or one’s genetic donors, shouldn’t we be trying to make it so that the best teachers are trusted, period?
If you seriously believe what that is implying, that argument wouldn’t just apply to education. Why shouldn’t we just take away all children at birth (or grow them in the wombs of paid volunteers and prohibit all other childbearing) to have them completely raised by experts, not just educated by them?
Would it benefit the children more than being raised by the parents? Then the answer would be “yes.” Many people throughout history attempted to have their children raised by experts alone, so it is not without precedent, for all its strangeness. Nobles in particular entrusted their children to servants, tutors, and warriors, rather than seek to provide everything needed for a healthy (by their standards) childhood themselves. Caring about one’s offspring may include realizing that one needs lots of help.
By the way, I did not intend to cut off an avenue of exploration, here—merely to point out that the selection processes for business, government, and mating do not have anything to do with getting a better teacher or a person good at deciding what should be taught. If that does destroy some potential solution, I hope you forgive me, and would love to hear of that solution so I may change.
An education bureaucrat, on the other hand, is a person hand-picked to make decisions for a vast number of children.
You have an extremely over-idealistic view of how the education bureaucracy (or any bureaucracy for that matter) works.
For evolutionary reasons, parents have a strong desire to do what’s best for their child, bureaucracies on the other hand have all kinds of motivations (especially perpetuating the bureaucracy).
he is not a total idiot, directly abusive, dead, or missing,
You haven’t dealt with bureaucracy much, have you?
he has a reasonable budget to work with.
There are a lot of failing school systems with large budgets. Throwing money at a broken system doesn’t give you a working system, it gives you a broken system that wastes even more money.
For evolutionary reasons, parents have a strong desire to do what’s best for their child, bureaucracies on the other hand have all kinds of motivations (especially perpetuating the bureaucracy).
Evolution is satisfied if at least some of the children live to breed. There are several possible strategies that parents can follow here; having many children and encouraging promiscuity would satisfy evolutionary reasons and likely do so better than having few children and ensuring that they are properly educated. Evolutionary reasons are insufficient to ensure that what happens is good for the children; evolutionary reasons are satisfied by the presence of grandchildren.
he has a reasonable budget to work with.
There are a lot of failing school systems with large budgets. Throwing money at a broken system doesn’t give you a working system, it gives you a broken system that wastes even more money.
Yes. That means that the problems in those systems are not money; the problems in those systems lie elsewhere, and need to be dealt with separately.
he is not a total idiot, directly abusive, dead, or missing,
You haven’t dealt with bureaucracy much, have you?
...not that much, no. I would kind of expect that, when dealing with someone who will be making decisions that affect vast numbers of children, people will make some effort to consider the long-term effects of such choices. (I realise that, in some cases, this will involve words like ‘indoctrination’; there can be a dark side to long-term planning).
This may be over-idealistic on my part. The way I see it, though, it is not the bureaucrat’s job to be better at making decisions for children than the best parent, or even than the average parent. It is the bureaucrat’s job to create a floor; to ensure that no child is treated worse than a certain level.
The way I see it, though, it is not the bureaucrat’s job to be better at making decisions for children than the best parent, or even than the average parent. It is the bureaucrat’s job to create a floor; to ensure that no child is treated worse than a certain level.
It doesn’t (and can’t) work this way in practice. In practice what happens is that there is a disagreement between the bureaucracy and the parents. In that case whose views should prevail? If you answer “the bureaucracy’s” your floor is now also a ceiling, if you answer “the parents’ ” you’ve just gutted your floor. If you want to answer “the parents’ if their average or better and the bureaucracy’s otherwise” then the question becomes whose job is it to make that judgement, and we’re back to the previous two cases.
I would kind of expect that, when dealing with someone who will be making decisions that affect vast numbers of children, people will make some effort to consider the long-term effects of such choices.
I am not sure why exactly it does not work this way, but as a matter of fact, it does not. Specifically I am thinking about department of education in Slovakia. As far as I know, it works approximately like this: There are two kinds of people there; elected and unelected.
The elected people (not sure if only the minister, or more people) only care about short-term impression on their voters. They usually promise to “reform the school system” without being more specific, which is always popular, because everyone knows the system is horrible. There is no system behind the changes, it is usually a random drift of “we need one less hour of math, and one more hour of English, because languages are important” and “we need one less hour of English and one more hour of math, because former students can’t do any useful stuff”; plus some new paperwork for teachers.
The unelected people don’t give a shit about anything. They just sit there, take their money, and expect to sit there for the next decades. They have zero experience with teaching, and they don’t care. They just invent more paperwork for teachers, because then the existing paperwork explains why their jobs are necessary (someone must collect all the data, retype it to Excel, and create reports). The minister usually has no time or does not care enough to understand their work, optimize it, and fire those who are not needed. It is very easy for a bureaucrat to create a work for themselves, because paperwork recursively creates more paperwork. These people are not elected, so they don’t fear the votes; and the minister is dependent on their cooperation, so they don’t fear the minister.
I was under the impression you wanted to improve things significantly. Hence why I mentioned that issue—and it IS an issue.
My point is that a child’s parents are more likely to make good decisions for the child then education bureaucrats.
That depends on the parents. Yes, many parents (including mine and, presumably, yours) have the best interests of the child at heart, and have the knowledge and ability to be able to serve those interests quite well.
This is not, however, true of all parents. There’s no entrance exam for parenthood. Thus:
Some parents are directly abusive to their children (including: many parents who abuse alcohol and/or drugs)
Some parents are total idiots; even if they have the best interests of the child at heart, they have no idea what to do about it
Some parents are simply too mired in poverty; they can’t afford food for their children, never mind schooling
Some parents are, usually through no fault of their own, dead while their children are still young
Some parents are absent for some reason (possibly an acrimonious divorce? Possibly in order to find employment?)
An education bureaucrat, on the other hand, is a person hand-picked to make decisions for a vast number of children. Ideally, he is picked for his ability to do so; that is, he is not a total idiot, directly abusive, dead, or missing, and he has a reasonable budget to work with. He also has less time to devote to making a decision per child.
That’s like claiming that bicycling is better than driving cars, as long as “driving cars’ includes cases where the cars are missing or broken.
If the parents are missing, dead, abusive, or total idiots (depending on how severe the “total” idiocy is), they can be replaced by adoptive or foster parents. You would need to compare bureaucrats to parents-with-replacement, not to parents-without-replacement, to get a meaningful comparison.
A question: How many people are so attached to being experts at parenting that they would rather see children jobless, unhappy, or dead than educated by experts in a particular field (whether biology or social studies)? Those are the people I worry about, when I imagine a system in which parents/government could decide all the time what their children learn and from what institution. For every parent or official that changes their religion just to get children into the best schools, willing to give up every alliance just to get the tribe’s offspring a better chance at life, and happy to give up their own authority in the name of a growing child’s happiness, there are many, many more who are not so caring and fair, I fear.
Experts in a field are far more likely to want to educate children better BECAUSE the above attachment to beliefs, politics, and authority is not, in their minds, in competition with their care for the children (or, at least, shouldn’t be, if those same things depend upon their knowledge). So, rather than saying we trust business, government, or one’s genetic donors, shouldn’t we be trying to make it so that the best teachers are trusted, period? Or, am I missing the point?
That’s a very odd question because you’re phrasing it as a hypothetical, thus forcing the logical answer to be “yes, being taught by an expert is better than having the child dead”, but you’re giving no real reason to believe the hypothetical is relevant to the real world. If experts could teleport to the moon, should we replace astronauts with them?
If you seriously believe what that is implying, that argument wouldn’t just apply to education. Why shouldn’t we just take away all children at birth (or grow them in the wombs of paid volunteers and prohibit all other childbearing) to have them completely raised by experts, not just educated by them?
Would it benefit the children more than being raised by the parents? Then the answer would be “yes.” Many people throughout history attempted to have their children raised by experts alone, so it is not without precedent, for all its strangeness. Nobles in particular entrusted their children to servants, tutors, and warriors, rather than seek to provide everything needed for a healthy (by their standards) childhood themselves. Caring about one’s offspring may include realizing that one needs lots of help.
By the way, I did not intend to cut off an avenue of exploration, here—merely to point out that the selection processes for business, government, and mating do not have anything to do with getting a better teacher or a person good at deciding what should be taught. If that does destroy some potential solution, I hope you forgive me, and would love to hear of that solution so I may change.
You have an extremely over-idealistic view of how the education bureaucracy (or any bureaucracy for that matter) works.
For evolutionary reasons, parents have a strong desire to do what’s best for their child, bureaucracies on the other hand have all kinds of motivations (especially perpetuating the bureaucracy).
You haven’t dealt with bureaucracy much, have you?
There are a lot of failing school systems with large budgets. Throwing money at a broken system doesn’t give you a working system, it gives you a broken system that wastes even more money.
Evolution is satisfied if at least some of the children live to breed. There are several possible strategies that parents can follow here; having many children and encouraging promiscuity would satisfy evolutionary reasons and likely do so better than having few children and ensuring that they are properly educated. Evolutionary reasons are insufficient to ensure that what happens is good for the children; evolutionary reasons are satisfied by the presence of grandchildren.
Yes. That means that the problems in those systems are not money; the problems in those systems lie elsewhere, and need to be dealt with separately.
...not that much, no. I would kind of expect that, when dealing with someone who will be making decisions that affect vast numbers of children, people will make some effort to consider the long-term effects of such choices. (I realise that, in some cases, this will involve words like ‘indoctrination’; there can be a dark side to long-term planning).
This may be over-idealistic on my part. The way I see it, though, it is not the bureaucrat’s job to be better at making decisions for children than the best parent, or even than the average parent. It is the bureaucrat’s job to create a floor; to ensure that no child is treated worse than a certain level.
It doesn’t (and can’t) work this way in practice. In practice what happens is that there is a disagreement between the bureaucracy and the parents. In that case whose views should prevail? If you answer “the bureaucracy’s” your floor is now also a ceiling, if you answer “the parents’ ” you’ve just gutted your floor. If you want to answer “the parents’ if their average or better and the bureaucracy’s otherwise” then the question becomes whose job is it to make that judgement, and we’re back to the previous two cases.
I am not sure why exactly it does not work this way, but as a matter of fact, it does not. Specifically I am thinking about department of education in Slovakia. As far as I know, it works approximately like this: There are two kinds of people there; elected and unelected.
The elected people (not sure if only the minister, or more people) only care about short-term impression on their voters. They usually promise to “reform the school system” without being more specific, which is always popular, because everyone knows the system is horrible. There is no system behind the changes, it is usually a random drift of “we need one less hour of math, and one more hour of English, because languages are important” and “we need one less hour of English and one more hour of math, because former students can’t do any useful stuff”; plus some new paperwork for teachers.
The unelected people don’t give a shit about anything. They just sit there, take their money, and expect to sit there for the next decades. They have zero experience with teaching, and they don’t care. They just invent more paperwork for teachers, because then the existing paperwork explains why their jobs are necessary (someone must collect all the data, retype it to Excel, and create reports). The minister usually has no time or does not care enough to understand their work, optimize it, and fire those who are not needed. It is very easy for a bureaucrat to create a work for themselves, because paperwork recursively creates more paperwork. These people are not elected, so they don’t fear the votes; and the minister is dependent on their cooperation, so they don’t fear the minister.