Sunday, April 18, 2010

An Education

  1. We watched the movie An Education this weekend, and I thought it was very good. I want to say a few things about it, but it will ruin the movie. Everyone watch the movie this week and I'll blog about it next week.
  2.  One more thing about a conflict of visions (for now, anyway). I think it kind of informs the Public Choice theory I was talking about two post ago (the outcomes of elections being mostly random). One of Boudreax's points in that podcast is that political candidates are a combination of different positions, such that any politician you vote for is likely to hold a number of positions you don't support. And you cannot desegregate the positions; you have to compromise and pick the candidate that best represents your thoughts, taking the good with the bad. But one thing I think does help the situation is that people more or less fall into two camps. They have either a constrained vision (Republican) or an unconstrained vision (Democrat).  I think this undercuts Boudreaux's point because even though when we vote we have to choose a bundle of positions, Sowell's point is we are actually very likely to have preferences that strongly align with one of two bundles.
  3. Let me see if this situation strikes you as a paradox like it did me. In the church we can get baptized if we are accountable, but there is no need if you are not accountable. In fact, you may not be permitted to be baptized if you are not accountable. But of course, if you were never accountable--say you are mentally handicapped--then that is no drawback because you are not responsible for your sins. But what if you are accountable, but then become unaccountable? Well, you probably can't get baptized can you, because baptism is a covenant, and you have to enter by choice, but you are not capable of making that choice. But you also are still responsible for your sins. It's kind of a catch 22--your accountable for your sins, but you can't do anything about them. Well, the one safety valve on this scenario is that once you actually die, a baptism for the dead can be performed for you. So you own body can't be baptized, but a surrogate's can. It all works out, but it's kind of strange, that you have to die so that someone else can be baptized for you, and then you can choose to accept that baptism in the after-life, as opposed to just getting baptized yourself and choosing later.
  4. You can read some of my thoughts on using U.S. military power, here. And you can comment on this post, if you don't want to comment at B v. E.
  5. It's getting late, but I still wanted to write something about vouchers. This study could be better (click through for a summary), although this reply makes some good points. I initially felt a huge let down. Based on first principles, it seemed to me any school choice program had to improve education. On further reflection here are few thoughts on why that doesn't seem to be the case or on what the study might mean:
    1. Education has improved but we may not be measuring how it has improved.
    2. Surrounding public schools may be competing for students, so an overall improvement in the education of students in the area may be a result of competition, with no significant variance between the quality of public and private schools.
    3. Home and family environment are obviously the most important factors in education. Maybe vouchers improve education, but perhaps the effect of a modest or even significant increase in school quality is simply drowned out by other factors playing into education,  like home, family and friends. (I did, however,  kind of think that giving parents some control over where their children went to school would encourage parents to be more involved.)
    4. School vouchers don't improve school quality. Suppose for a second that vouchers make absolutely no difference in education. Well that means they haven't hurt education. And now parents have a choice. It seems to me like giving people a choice, even one that doesn't make much of a difference, is still a good thing. It could make a difference down the road? And it at least makes parents feel better about the education their kids are getting. (Or is that just deception?)

3 comments:

Leigh Harris said...

Yes, it was very good and I am looking forward to your next post..even though we already talked about it.

Brett said...

3. Never thought of that. Yes, it's a little odd, but the fact that being baptized yourself is accepting the gospel whereas having someone baptized for you is the chance to accept the gospel would make waiting reasonable.

5.1 - Agreeing on what is effective education is quite difficult, let alone measuring it.
5.2 - That's possible, but the article does say, "Left unsaid is that Milwaukee black students in the public schools have the lowest reading scores of any cohort of black students in the country.”
5.3 - I worry that the influence of home life might render institutional educational reforms futile.
5.4 - The fact that the private schools achieved the same results at a much reduced cost is a sizable victory.

Anonymous said...

As you probably know, I kind of think tests can measure academic ability to a degree, so, unless it's a really bad test, 5.1 is probably not my best argument.

Re 5.2: I was looking at this line from the second link: "The evidence shows that Milwaukee public schools are generating better results than comparable urban districts elsewhere, which is suggestive of a positive effect from competition."

That's interesting--black students do worse in reading, but overall scores are better than comparable urban districts. Does that mean that blacks are doing better in other categories? Or could it mean that blacks are doing worse in general under vouchers, but whites are doing better? Those two statements aren't inconsistent, but they don't really fit together well.

Re 5.3. I agree. When you're a single mom who works, it's probably just hard to do as good a job teaching your kids. And it may not matter much that your kids attend the high school equivalent of Harvard.

re 5.4 completely agree. I'm starting to think that money has almost no effect on the quality of education.