No money for education

Our government is routinely bribed by lobbyists for special interests. You may have heard of them. In the 2004 elections, the American Federation of Teachers was the third largest with $12,789,296; the National Education Association was eighth with $10,521,538. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was ninth with $9,882,022. They use this money to bribe Congress to enact laws which allow them to make more money. Education is a big scam that costs about fifteen hundred bucks per year for every man, woman and child in America. Eighteen thousand dollars for a high school degree. My proposal is to let the people keep this money and spend it on their own education. This would actually be pretty good for the economy I would think. Libraries, home schooling, university "open courseware," "distance learning," debating societies. There is a wealth of open courseware here. I could expand on it but that would deprive my opponent of the experience of learning for oneself. Give it a few minutes. http://www.google.com...= If the Aussies can do it anybody can. http://www.highbeam.com... One argument for asynchronous (typically web-based) delivery as opposed to synchronous (real-time video) delivery of distance learning courseware is that the goal of distance learning in the future should not be to deliver a vicarious classroom lecture experience using remote technology, but instead should be to use an array of knowledge media to fashion interactive individualized learning environments for remote users. That's from http://www.westga.edu... Don Beagle University of North Carolina at Charlotte Donald Beagle is Associate Director of Library Services and Head of the Information Commons at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. UNCC's new Information Commons includes send-and-receive distance learning facilities for the North Carolina Information Highway and the North Carolina Research and Education Network. He also wrote The Information Commons Handbook, Donald Robert Beagle. NY: Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc., 2006 He sounds like a pretty smart guy. Here's an article by him: Donald Beagle. "Conceptualizing an Information Commons", Journal of Academic Librarianship, vol. 25, no. 2, March, 1999, p. 88 Have to look it up yourself. The cost of an education is rising alarmingly. State legislatures are balking at financing colleges because Big Business is so eager to help out. This is a big mistake as my opponent has pointed out. http://debate.uvm.edu... I thank my opponent for making my arguments for me. Just reverse PRO and CON and adapt arguments about federal vs private funding since the debate is about NO funding. I'm pretty sure I made that clear. C1: Education is a fundamental human right. I: Depriving individuals of education deprives them of their human rights. Our educational system does just that. C2: Federal funding is necessary to ensure all individuals are able to access their right to education. This one may need a little work I: The PRO plan deprives individuals of education. That's not an education; it is the illusion of an education. Now you have to do it yourself. Here's fifteen humdred bucks. C3: Curriculum based education provides the most stringent standards for student development. I: Implementing the PRO's plan will remove these standards, degrading the value of an education, and the evaporating much of the learning a student COULD have under publicly funded education. I have already argued that those standards do not work. C4: Capitalist-based schooling exacerbates socioeconomic problems. Thank you for arguing my side. I: The PRO's plan separates individuals arbitrarily and keeps minorities from achieving. The claim is almost the impact itself: Do you want to perpetuate a system where an arbitrary factor such as race will keep you from accessing your human rights? You mean like the educational system? C5: Privately funded education will not benefit the economy. I: A diminished economy harms all 310 million Americans, hurts our global competitiveness and on the whole is very, very, very, bad. :) I fail to see how giving someone fifteen hundred bucks hurts them. Observation Four: Summary of the Previous Three: 1) There are no PRO impacts, only unwarranted claims. What's an impact? In each rebuttal, the speaker must defend his/her own case from previous attacks made by the opponent, and attack the opponent's case itself. An argument left untouched by the opponent does not necessarily mean that the debater has agreed with that point. However, a failure to touch upon all points may be important, to the degree that "dropped" points cannot be defended later in the debate. But there is no clear definition of what goes in each round, as there is in oral debating. And oral debating's a whole lot different. http://udbmas.newsvine.com... 2) The PRO offers no way to solve for those claims. That is not the intent of a debate. See the rules. Judges must remember that debaters are not required to propose 'plans' for dealing with given situations.