From: mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com (fred j mccall 575-3539)
Newsgroups: tx.politics
Subject: Re: Football Failures at Bowie Force end of Season
Date: 11 Nov 92 04:55:14 GMT
Distribution: tx
Organization: Texas Instruments Inc

In <1992Nov10.001336.13963@watson.ibm.com> johniac@austin.ibm.com (John Iacoletti/100000) writes:

>fred j mccall 575-3539 (mccall@mksol.dseg.ti.com) wrote:
>:                  Or do you think they just said, "Hey, I've got an
>: idea.  Let's not let 'em play sports if they're failing.  Well, no, it
>: doesn't seem to bear any relationship to anything, but it's fun to
>: make up arbitrary rules."?

>That's exactly what I think happened.  Do you have evidence to the contrary?

Do you have evidence in the affirmative?  If not, Occams Razor would
seem to indicate that one should expect that the people putting
together the plan to improve education would make these decisions
because they expect them to improve education.  Your assumption seems
to require a capriciousness that takes your 'explanation' outside the
grounds of 'simplest explanation for the facts'.

>: Worry away.  Don't YOU know the difference between a good citizen and
>: a bad one, John?

>No I don't, as a matter of fact.  And seeing as how "good citizen" is a value
>judgement, I'd like to know how YOU define it.  Are you willing to tell me?

Examine your beliefs on how a libertarian world would work and then
you tell me, John.

>:                                                          Where, for
>: example, do you get the idea that I "don't like football", for
>: example?  

>Sorry.  You don't think football is "productive".  Is that better?

I don't think extra-curricular football is of sufficient benefit to
society (who are paying to run the schools and such) to warrant the
costs, including the adverse impacts on the academics for all the
other students.

If you agree that 'an educated populace is to the benefit of society'
and that for that reason we can reasonably be expected to have to fund
it (rather than just educating our own kids), I'm afraid you're going
to have to explain to me how paying for someone to play football for
four years, learn nothing, and hold back others by their presence at
the same time fits into that argument.  Or would you like to retract
the whole line of argument and just say each parent should be
responsible for the costs of educating their own kids, with all the
bad implications that that has?

>: The difference between our outlooks, John, is that you want to let
>: that kid go through school learning nothing,

>You're misrepresenting my position.  I'm questioning your assumed link between
>extracurricular activities and "learning nothing" as well as your assumed link
>between "good grades" and "learning something".  

Well, silly me, I have this idea that if someone is having problems
with something that more time spent on it will help.  Time after
school spent in football practice and time spent playing takes up time
that could be spent working harder on the material they aren't
getting.  Silly me.  Obviously if someone is getting good grades they
are learning SOMETHING, even if it's only how to get over on tests.
While grades aren't a particularly good measure of achievement in
close comparisons, I think it's fair to say that someone who gets
none of the material in a class will probably flunk and that someone
who gets an A probably got at least some of the material.  Do you have
a logical explanation for why I should believe otherwise?

>Also in the final analysis,
>whether a person learns or not depends upon that person.  You don't "let"
>somebody learn nothing, nor can you "make" somebody learn something.  I think
>that negative reinforcement is counterproductive.

Then we should do away with prisons and penalties for violating the
laws as well, right?  I sure hope you don't have any dogs, because you
will NEVER housebreak them with that attitude.

>: and then later say "fuck
>: him" when he can't make it because he never learned either any of the
>: academic material or any of those principles like having to do 'work'
>: before you have 'fun'.

>I'm not particularly interested in you foisting your "puritan work ethic" upon
>the masses.  Weren't you one of the people opposed to teaching ethics in
>public schools?

Who's teaching ethics?  Hit the books or hit the road.  Is that an
ethical position?

>: He is somehow immaculately going to become
>: 'not a problem'.  Under your view, we should simply go back to
>: privately funded schools where everybody pays for their own child, and
>: screw anyone who can't afford it.  Social Darwinism at its best.

>Last time I checked, the U.S. Constitution didn't say anything about education
>being a "right".  In fact it doesn't say anything at all about education.  But 
>given the fact that socialized education is here, I resent you imposing your 
>values upon people who may not agree with them.

Fine.  Give me my money back and let me buy the weapons of my choice
and I'll shut up and let you bear the responsibility for the
absolutely screwed up society that you seem to want.  However, as long
as you argue that educating children is of benefit to society as a
whole and hence it's reasonable for everyone to pay for it, then
EDUCATE them.  Playing football isn't what we're trying to get across. 

>: Because, John, if they can't make a living I'm faced with the choice
>: of having to either support them, arrest them, or bury them (or
>: perhaps some combination of those).

>Actually you don't have to do any of these three.

And what do you propose when they can't earn a living and decide to
make it by taking stuff from me?  Let them?  That's supporting them.
Stop them?  That requires arresting them or shooting them (which
requires burying them).  If you have another alternative, I'd like to
hear it.

>: This isn't true in that little
>: libertarian dream world you seem to be coming from,

>Please respond to what I actually write and not your preconceptions about
>where I seem to be coming from.

Please respond to what I actually write and not your preconceptions about
where I seem to be coming from.

>: but people who
>: didn't learn how to DO anything don't simply go away.  They become
>: problems for the rest of us, even under that social Darwinism that you
>: favor. 

>Only because you choose to assume responsibility for them.  This is great:
>You insist that we spend public money to take care of people and then you
>complain when you have to take care of people.

No, I complain when you want me to pay to educate people and then
don't want to let me educate them.

>: Well, John, it seems that a lot of them DON'T learn those things in
>: elementary school.  And I thought you were insisting that education
>: isn't a window that slams shut, so why is it too late for them to
>: learn it later on?

>Fred, they don't teach reading and basic arithmetic in high schools.  Is "no
>pass-no play" going to magically cause that knowledge to just float into their
>heads?  If you're worried about kids not learning to read or do basic
>arithmetic, I suggest you focus on the elementary schools, or get these 
>classes introduced into the high schools.

Gee, did all the remedial classes go away?  John, they teach reading
and basic arithmetic WHERE I WORK.  They had classes for them in high
school (for folks who didn't get it earlier), too.  Gotta get it
somewhere, John.

>: No, it's easier to NOT think and just let things continue on as they
>: were, including letting people who ara failing CURRICULUM to continue
>: to participate in EXTRA-CURRICULAR activities.

>What's the difference between doing nothing and doing something that doesn't
>have the effect that you want?  That's often the problem with activist
>governments.  Sometimes "doing something" is the goal rather than "doing
>something that works".

You have some evidence that there is something to be gained by letting
these kids play football for four years while flunking all their
classes?  This I've GOT to hear.  I can make a logical argument (and
did, earlier) for the impacts 'no pass - no play' can reasonably be
expected to have to the positive.  Would you like to explain the
positives of NOT having it to me?

>: This flies in the face
>: of all that 'free market forces' jazz that you espouse, since it tells
>: them they can have the 'good' part (the rewards) without doing the
>: part that they're supposed to be doing (the curriculum).

>That doesn't sound like "free market" to me.  In a educational free market,
>the students would decide just what they were supposed to be doing, and what
>the "good parts" are, and hopefully they would be the same thing.

Yes, but in any free market there are costs, risks, and rewards.  You
want to eliminate that and just let them pick any old thing for four
years and pass or fail as they please, with no costs, risks, or
rewards involved until well downstream.  Real markets don't work like
this in isolation.

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.
Newsgroups: tx.politics