Discuss the US Presidential Election & Education

In 24 hours, many of you will be able to vote. So as we come down to the wire, this is really our last chance to talk about the issues. We've already discussed Health Care, the War, and the Economy. Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years. Which candidate will make the next generation smarter?

Vote

Nuff said. (These issues are a stimulus to trigger a voting response, and have NOTHING to do with policies that will exist post-election.)

Re:Vote

If you don't vote:

• Your opinion doesn't count.
• you're not entitled to complain
• you'll have several years to regret it

So get off your lazy butts and vote! You are not too busy.

Re:Vote

What if you're complaining about the system as a whole? Voting would be quite hypocritical then. Unless your voting for a guy thats running on the basis of changing the system, but running within the system... I guess.

Re:Vote

By being given the opportunity to vote, we're invited to participate in our electoral process.

If you decline to vote, then you really have no recourse to complain about the results of that process, do you? You had your chance to be heard and decided you had other things to do.

Re:Vote

No, if I don't vote it will make no difference whatsoever. I live in a state that will definitely go Democratic. Unlike 2 years ago, there is no one running for office that is contested. Given our electoral system, my vote cannot do anything other than possibly give an independent candidate enough votes to receive election funding and a place on the ballot next time. Unfortunately this time, there is no Ross Perot to get my vote.

I will vote, as my civic obligation. But if I chose to not vote, please do not assume it is because I am too lazy to do so. It has nothing to do with it, and none of your points make any sense to me.

1. My opinion really doesn't count anyway, my vote can't help anyone get elected unless I change residence to a more independent state.
2. The two party system gives me every right to complain
3. Every time I vote for a candidate I regret it anyway, cause all we get is more of the same - bigger government, more taxes & more intrusion. Ross Perot got my vote twice and I have regretted he didn't win each time. I can't remember the name of the independent candidates the last two times, and regrettably we ended up with W.

If I don't vote I can't complain?

Silly me. I thought the First Amendment allowed me to bitch until my heart is content.

I'm tired of hearing that I can't complain if I don't vote. Who made up this mantra? The people who want you to vote for them.
And the masses have bought it. They think they really have a say in what happens in government. Ha!

By choosing not to vote I *am* making my statement: I don't like the candidates or the system.

Enough with Groupthink.

Re:Vote

If you do vote

• Your opinion barely counts.
• If your guy wins, you're not entitled to complain because you voted for him
• If your guy loses, you're not entitled to complain because you accepted the results of the democratic system by voting
• You'll have several years to regret it

So vote if you'd like, but don't fool yourself into thinking you're morally superior because you did, or that you really had an effect. In Wyoming, your vote is about 1 in 150,000 of a share in electing 3 electors, who are a 3 in 538 share of electing the president. And that's the best you can do. Every other state is worse.

It's the teachers, and the parents.

If I had to make on comment on the presidency and eduction, it would be that education has to be reformed from the bottom up, not from the top down. It's the parents, and the teachers, that are important here-- not the president.

The federal government really isn't the appropriate place to deal with any kind of primary educational policy.

Re:Great plan you have for being competitive w/ Ch

It is not the government's job to plan things for us. It is hilariously bad at it, anyway. It is the government's job to protect our liberties so we can do things ourselves.

We are perfectly capable of organizing our own local educational systems. Some of them won't be as good as others, but they can learn from the ones that are successful.

Having the government plan it, and run it, will just guarantee that the quality continues to degrade universally.

McCain...

MAYBE Obama will get rid of NCLB, but I don't see him getting away from the typical left position of supporting the teachers' unions goals and just throwing money at education without real standards. We spend more money - under left and right administrations - per student and don't see the results, which means the overall system is broken.

I don't see him actively supporting homeschooling as well, and we know he's going to be against vouchers.

The biggest problem, however, will NEVER be government involvement. I don't care who is in power, but the ONLY real influence on children's education is PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. It doesn't matter what teachers, principals, politicians, and everyone else does if a parent doesn't care about how well their kid is doing in school - it's nearly too great a hurdle to overcome.

I think that the only thing that I have ever seen that may do something is a performance-based state-sponsored tuition program (like Louisiana TOPS or Georgia HOPE) which is directly tied to secondary school performance with college tuition on the line - there are a LOT of parents in those states that I know of who pushed their kids to get good grades simply because there was a near-free college tuition at stake (it's what paid for my own tuition at Louisiana Tech).

Re:McCain...

MAYBE Obama will get rid of NCLB, but I don't see him getting away from the typical left position of supporting the teachers' unions goals and just throwing money at education without real standards.

He plans on reforming it, not eliminating it. From his site [barackobama.com]:

Reform No Child Left Behind: Obama and Biden will reform NCLB, which starts by funding the law. Obama and Biden believe teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama and Biden will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

What I emphasized does seem to align with your assessment of throwing money at the problem. Those are the best details I can come up with so don't ask me how he plans to improve accountability ... I wish he had thrown out some metrics or requirements that he was aiming for. But if he did that, we might be able to hold him to it!

How do you grade performance?

Tell me, how do you "grade" teachers? Why can't you simply go to your PTA meetings and your teacher in service meetings and be a responsible parent and know what your children are doing?

The reason i don't want teacher "appraisals" outside of what a school district does in and of itself is because some people would rate teachers poorly because they're not christian enough, not moral enough or not forcing "family values" enough or other non public educational focused education based issues.

Start by giving teachers livable wages, start by funding real programs that put books, science and math into students hands. Start challenging and teaching kids AT school. Get away from homework, let kids live a life after school and make school about learning.

BTW, if the middle class is doing better, so will the schools. Fix it from the bottom up, not top down.

Obama'08

Intelligent Design

... belongs in the philosophy class, not science. Science is a set of facts seeking a conclusion to support them- Intelligent Design is a conclusion seeing a set of facts to support it.

In a philosophy or comparative religions class? Absolutely- go nuts! Be sure to include a whole bunch of other religious theory, including Hindu creation myths etc. Would be a fun class.

But as science? ... Do not want.

Re:Intelligent Design

Creationism is fine in a well-taught science class. It was taught in my biology classes in the early '90s. First, it was proposed, then it was contrasted with scientific theories and the differences (predictions, useful results, and so on) were pointed out. There are various forms of creationism. We looked at one of the pre-Darwin forms that actually did make a prediction - that species were stable and unchanging - and then we looked at the counter-evidence and saw that it was a bad hypothesis. Creationism has a role in biology classes in the same way that alchemy has a role in chemistry classes. It shows the shortcomings of work that occurred before the development of the scientific method. It helps motivate the subject and helps provide a background for real scientific theories.

Not the Federal Government's Job

If you are concerned about the education in the United States, voice your concerns to your state and local government. The only thing the federal government has authority over concerning education is the ability to tax you and decide how it will spend that tax money. Looking to solve education issues at the federal level is a farce.

Do Over?

Can we vote for a do over all the choices suck?

Err..

Why should the president, or the government, have a role in "making everyone smarter"? I also don't see how people can be "made smarter" when they are spoon-fed a pre-packaged education and are not driven to learn on their own - something they would be more motivated to do if we moved away from our current nanny-state that lets us get by without being informed about the choices we make.

It's easy, just think logically.

Why can't McCain properly defend his education policy? It is the most important issue facing our nation, and it is where McCain is leaps and bounds ahead of Obama!

We have the best private education system in the world. We have the best college education system in the world, both public and private. We have one of the worst public school systems in the developed world. Why? What's the difference between our tremendously successful college system and private system, and our horrendous public school system? Guess what, it's NOT MONEY. Per-student spending in public schools is almost DOUBLE what it is in private schools! Surprised? You certainly didn't hear that in tonight's debate. Only the absolute top most elite private schools cost more per student than we spend on our public schools, and the difference is not much, just 10-20% more. And students at those elite schools get WAY more in return for that extra 10-20%. Oh, and public school teachers earn more than private school teachers, so that's not it either.

So what's the difference between how our public, government-run schools operate, and how our colleges and private schools operate? Here are the differences:

1. No teachers unions in private schools and colleges.

2. School choice: private schools and colleges must compete for your dollars. Public schools don't; the government decides which school you must attend, based on what neighborhood you live in.

Let's go into #1.

The teachers union is the most dangerous organization on the planet. They are more of a threat to our nation than Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea combined. They are ruining the education of our children and destroying our only hope of maintaining our prosperity and peace.

The teachers union has made it impossible to fire teachers for poor performance. To be fired, a teacher basically has to break the law or molest a student. They can't be fired for simply being a terrible teacher. It's gotten so bad that at public schools across the country, bad teachers are paid full-time salaries to simply sit in the teachers' lounge all day and not teach! Schools are forced to do this because they don't want these bad teachers anywhere near their students, but they haven't done anything that the union says they can be fired for.

In private schools and colleges, teacher pay is based on performance. In public schools, because of teachers union demands, pay is based on seniority (i.e. how long they've been working there). You can't pay good teachers more and bad teachers less, and therefore you can't attract and reward the best teaching talent. Public teachers as a whole lose the motivation that drives the private sector to work harder and better: more money.

Finally, the teachers union is 100% opposed to school choice. Why? Because it would force all public teachers to work harder and compete for their job, just like everyone does in every job in the private sector.

And this leads directly into Point #2.

It is school choice, in the form of vouchers, that will save our public education system. The way our system works now, schools tell the government how many students they have each year, and the government funds them with X amount of dollars per student. The way school choice will work is this: instead of the government giving those dollars to the school, that money will be given directly to the parents in the form of a voucher. The parents can then take that voucher and use it to send their kids to any school they want, public or private.

What affect will this have? Competition. The same thing that makes our private schools and colleges perform so well. They'll have to wise up, stop wasting money, become more efficient, and start teaching better, or else they'll start losing students. Parents will choose to send their kids to better-performing schools.

Cue the teachers union yelling "But you'll be taking money away from already struggling schools!". Of course, that's the point, and that's a good thing - because the struggling schoo

One that will NOT help science...

If you feel that scientific research funding is important to education (or anything at all, for that matter), then you should be concerned about the Science Budget Freezes Proposed by John Sidney McCain III [sciencemag.org].

Re:Make them Pay

We are within 2 days of making the Republican party pay for it's failure, dishonorable behavior, and fraud.

How long before we can do the same with Democrats?

Re:Looking from afar...

Looking at it from this side of the pond, it is not quite so clear. Compared with socialist-leaning political types we see in Europe, Obama is seen as a very centrist politician. However compared with the usual types of politicians we are used to in this country, it will be a significant shift toward the left if Obama gets the presidency and the Democrats keep control of congress. While this may be only a 2 year shift in power, looking at what happened to Bill Clinton and the Democrats previously, it is nevertheless makes me very nervous to think what might happen in those 2 years.

There is no candidate or their party that represents my more libertarian views on the world. Small government is not represented by either major party, personal gun ownership is shakily represented by the Republicans, and freedom of self-expression is shakily represented by the Democrats (for some history on the changes to what that party represents - look at what the Democrats did to the students in Chicago in the early 60s).

Obama may look right to you. However, I feel he represents the lesser of two evils between him and Senator Clinton. McCain would have been perfect 10 years ago. Now he just seems like a bitter old-man-puppet, who picked a hot "young" thing as his running mate and now will make all of us pay the price of a Democratic President due to his inability to pick a good VP candidate.

It is with pride that I go to the polls tomorrow, especially as a non-native citizen allowed the priveledge to vote via my naturalization. It is with some amount of shame that I pick a candidate that I agree less than 50% with on my topics of interest (including McCain, Obama, Bob Barr and Bill the Cat).

Re:Looking from afar...

Palin's stance on creationism? You mean that evolution should be taught exclusively in science class, as it is in Alaska? And that there's nothing wrong with discussing alternative views, in an appropriate context, without putting them in the curriculum? What's wrong with that?

I'm a scientist. I think that intelligent design and creationism are hogwash. But because of America's foundation in religion, they are concepts that anyone will come across outside of school. I think they should be discussed, at the teacher's discretion, especially if a student brings up the question, but should not be mandated in the curriculum.

Palin said in one interview "teach both... don't be afraid of information". The next day she went on to clarify her position by saying that they shouldn't be part of the curriculum, but it's ok to discuss them if a student brings it up. Actually here's the exact quote: "I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum."

Re:Looking from afar...

Speaking of unscrupulous things to win:

It should be known (the media is hiding the fact), that there is a special second polling day for registered republicans. This is to help alleviate lines. This Wednesday is a special extra day o voting only for you.

Don't let the unscrupulous liberal media get away with hiding this fact, stand up for your right to vote without lines on Wednesday November 5th!

Remember this special day is for registered republicans only, democrats and independents must vote tomorrow.

Re:Looking from afar...

Unless you happen to believe in creationism (like many do in the USA) then this is the trigger to vote for McCain/Palin.

Let's be honest here. Unless Palin is actually teaching the class her outlook on evolution has zero to do with her relation to education. Infact, keeping her in as a governor is probably more likely to get creationism pushed on more students than her being a vice president. On the federal level all she's going to do is go on and on about budgets. That's it.

If every intelligent person voted, these elections would never be too close to call.

Intelligent by who's standards? If your idea of intelligent is the normal Slashdot "everyone who thinks like me" kind of thing than I'm sure you're right. As for me? I know tons of vastly intelligent people who have some ideas that are far from my own. Enough to make me question who's really right. And out of these same tons of people many probably think creationism has some glimmer of truth to it. It doesn't bother me because I'm not asking them to teach biology to me.

Even if I were the difference between the evolutionist camp and the creationist camp means jack shit in the real world. How about we leave that stupid little debate behind and work on the idea that we're graduating kids that can't balance a checkbook. A fucking checkbook has a lot more to do with how this country progresses than whatever theory you have on the origins and progression of life. I bet you that if everyone in this country believed in creationism but could balance a checkbook we'd be a lot better off. We haven't even go an acceptable majority of the kids graduating to cover the basics of everyday life and we're busy bickering over evolution? Huh?

Also the nefarious involvement of unscrupulous people doing bad things to win, decreases the predictability of an outcome, when both sides are doing it.

It's just another reason to reject the two party system if you ask me. When we can finally shed ourselves of the "us or them" maybe we'll also let go of the hate that accompanies it.

Re:Looking from afar...

If every intelligent person voted, these elections would never be too close to call.

Intelligent != ability to make good choices. There are plenty of folks of average intelligence who excel at making good decisions and plenty of brilliant ones who continually fuck up their decisions. Intelligent people are subject to irrationality, self-interest and bias, just like everyone else.

I'm sure that this isn't the popular opinion among the alpha dorks who worship on the altar of IQ, but so be it.