I get your points, but it is flawed -obviously in my opinion ;-). You say that with government involvement, corruption will arise. I will not argue that, since everywhere man shows up, corruption follows its trail. But in my opinion free market is way more likely to get corruption going. If you want me to, I can give you numerous examples. Free market works at a small scale perfectly. If I were to start a bakery in a small village, that already has one, it is obviously that I have to increase my quality, or decrease my prises, in order to gain customers. It has proven how ever, numerous times, that the larger the company, the less trasparant it becomes, and more likely to enable corruption. For instance in case of education, if grades were to form a criteria, I could easily manipulate those to get a positive evaluation.
I see government and the people as one. The government should be the first employee of the people, just like your George Washington had in mind, idealizing Cincinatus, the Roman leader who was a farmer, and after serving his people, he went home to work on his land.
The bad thing about democracy is that it has an inbuild flaw, that people can be chosen for the wrong reasons. I don't trust someone who spends so much money just to become a president. You should vote for an idea in general, not a person. In my ideal world politics should be the least appealing jobs out there. People should do it because of their intrinsic moitvation, just the way I became a teacher. Not for the money, or the many holidays I became teacher, the fist can be better, the latter is just fine though. I wanted to become a teacher, to be involved in young peoples lives. Politicians should be in it for the will to serve their country the best way possible, not for the money, or the power. And we all know that there are those who are in it for just these reasons.
You don't become a CEO because of your good looks, or because you are such a funny guy. You are qualified, no matter whether someone else was more qualified and you get the job due to connections. People who know the company thought you were the right man for the job, since your profile matches the companies one.
Another reason why the marketidea doesn't apply to the school is the great variety of factors involved. Here in the Netherlands government is toying with the idea, an idea not a single teacher has asked for. The idea of 'creating' an excellent teacher. Who that teacher is, is to be determined by the principal, and that teacher is granted more money, more time to invest in him self, and is to coach other teachers to become just like him. But what is an excellent teacher? You raised the same question, trusting the answer will come, but I will guarantee you, there won't be an answer for that. You are dealing with so many different issues, it is horrible to set such standards. Social background, ability to learn, class sizes, personalities -both teacher and student- etc etc. What if my pupil is not good at school, grades are poor etc. But at a certain point in his live he makes a right decision involving drugs due to something I have told him. I would say I was the best teacher around for him at that moment, but this is data that can never be measured.
Goal of eduaction is to allow people to invest in them selves, and to make them 'good' citizens. Like I said, there is too much data that can't be measured to set that standard.
Well it has become too long a story, but it has my heart, that's why....sorry if I have bored you ;-)
Topic: A political question (Read 4347 times)
