On Public Education; DC/X anniversary meeting

View 785 Tuesday, August 06, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barrack Obama, January 231, 2009

This exchange was in last night’s mail:

Childless Taxpayers Funding Schools

It is a common misconception that it is somehow unfair for childless people to pay taxes that fund schools. In fact, everyone who pays school taxes is simply re-paying the cost of their own education, with interest, after inflation, and generally in proportion to how much they benefited from that education.

Thanks,

Jim Melendy

 

With my reply:

Even those who went to private or religious schools? And why should it be federal? The old notion of local school boards which also controlled the school taxes made the best education system in the world at one time.

I’ve been thinking about this since. My answer was correct but insufficient.

First, there is in the “repayment” hypothesis the assumption that the education provided was worth paying for. Now some schools have alumni who clearly think the school was worth the investment. Most of them, though, were like my Christian Brothers College high school in Memphis, which gets substantial alumni support, are private schools whose pupils are there not only voluntarily, but at considerable expense. I do not know if any of the Memphis public high schools that existed when I was there in the 1940’s still exist, but I doubt that many of them get much alumni support; and I am fairly certain that few 21^st Century public schools have grateful alumni associations. I suspect there are many advocates of certain LA public schools who would gladly help raze them to the ground.

One reason these schools are so awful is the subject of yesterday’s entry, the “mainstreaming” of severely handicapped students. If the justification of tax supported public schools is that they provide an education and are now collecting, with interest, for services rendered, then it’s pretty clear that requiring the paying customers to endure constant interruptions and absorption of teacher time by severely handicapped pupils who have been mainstreamed is theft.

Comes now the question of whose responsibility it is to do something for the severely handicapped. That is not an investment question. Perhaps it should be: perhaps the question ought to be, what education can we provide these children that will help them earn at least some of the money needed for their support? But if that is the question, it’s pretty clear that the answer will be training in skills appropriate to the handicap, and that is going to be quite different from what is taught to the general student body.

As to whose obligation it is, historically it has been the children’s parents with charity as first backup and the local community — parish or county – as secondary backup. It is certainly not part of the powers and duties of the Federal Government as detailed in the Constitution of 1789 as Amended.

Now it can be argued that the communities don’t do enough. They don’t meet the needs, and therefore it is up to the general government to be generous – not with its own money, of course, but with money forcibly extracted by the tax collector backup up by the BATF and Federal executioners if needed. Of course it is easy to be ‘charitable’ with other people’s money. It is easy enough for A and B to work together to determine what C must give to destitute D. That does not justify anyone having charitable feelings about the matter of course.

But the hidden question is, what has this done for the handicapped? Some benefit by mainstreaming. Indeed it might be shown that it is beneficial to the rest of the class to have some examples of handicapped people among them, so as to learn proper ways of treating them. Education is more than just book learning. But there are limits to that, and just about everyone who studies the situation objectively agrees, it’s easy enough to so saturate a class with mainstreamed pupils who really ought not be there as to detract from the education of everyone else in the class. This means that most of the students are not getting the education they need, and it is not a long leap to suspect that this will result in higher costs of training for employers, and over time a general lessening of productivity. And with lower productivity there are fewer resources to be applied to the good of the handicapped. It may be a great favor to those mainstreamed, but it is not necessarily a great favor to the next generation of students, handicapped or not.

We had a good walk today. Sable is a happy dog despite the limp. Every day is a gift.

And it’s lunch time.

Re: telegraph wire material

You mentioned copper telegraph wires, if you look it up, I think you’ll find that most of the mileage in 1859 was composed of galvanized iron wire. Even back then, copper was too dear to be hanging thousands of miles of it out where anyone could make off with it. Just a bit of trivia on a slow day….

And the sun watchers are now saying that we’re due to experience a flip in the sun’s magnetic polarity Real Soon Now.

Stan

Stan Schaefer

Yes, I expect that’s right on reflection.  I vaguely recall that as late as 1940 the Manhattan Project was briefly stalled by shortages of copper for the centrifuge wiring, and silver from the mint was drawn into wire and loaned to the project; at least I have heard this.  Copper in 1859 would have been too dear.  Thanks.

: DC-X 20th Anniversary Conference in NM August 16-18

We’re coming up fast on the 20th anniversary of DC-X’s first flight later this month, and some of the people involved have organized a conference in New Mexico to mark the occasion. I’ve volunteered to help out with the conference, and that’s what I’m writing to you about today.

Much of the original DC-X team will be there, to be honored and to talk about how they did it, techniques used and lessons learned. There will also be a look at some of the many things that came of DC-X’s success, plus a Reusable Spaceplane X-Vehicles workshop looking to what should come next, as well as a tour of the New Mexico Spaceport.

This is a one-of-a-kind event. It’s very unlikely that all these people will ever be in one place at the same time again. If you have a deep interest in where "new space" came from, where it is now, and where it should go next, this event is more than worth a trip to New Mexico in August.

Conference agenda and details at http://dc-xspacequest.org/

thanks for your time

Henry Vanderbilt

founder

Space Access Society