I was asked to comment on the following article:
The recession is forcing Americans to get crafty with their careers and think outside the bureaucratic box. But although the U.S. is supposed to be a country for self-starters, strict rules originally created to protect licensed professionals are making it extremely difficult for amateurs to get into business.
Jestina Clayton is the perfect example of an enterprising lady who can’t catch a break thanks to some rather high-and-mighty licensed professionals who want everyone to play by the rules, even though current rules really only benefit those who are already licensed. When Clayton moved to Utah from Sierra Leone at age 22, she started a small African hair-braiding business to pay the bills. But it’s illegal in the state of Utah to work with any form of hair extensions without a valid cosmetology license, which she found out thanks to a super-helpful stranger who emailed her and told her to delete her ad or she would be reported.
To answer the question of who benefits from licensing, I can share my experience of living in a country where the institution of licensing does not exist at all. When the Soviet Union fell apart, everybody needed to learn to make money. In the USSR, everybody got a pittance enabling people to survive in exchange for doing absolutely no work. Obviously, this system wasn’t going to remain intact in a newly capitalist society. Some of my compatriots chose to stay in governmental jobs that paid nothing but offered them the dubious benefit of not having to work. Some people chose not to work at all and spend their lives moaning and whining. Others had to learn to do something that would bring in money.
Teachers turned into hairdressers, engineers became restaurant chefs, the Communist party ideologues transformed themselves into bankers, and so on. Anybody could become anything they wanted, try their hand at any endeavor. The government was not just weak in the FSU countries. It was pathetically feeble. No regulations, no licensing, complete freedom of wild capitalism. We are all educated people here, we have all read Dickens. I hope I don’t need to explain to you who wins under such a system, right? The most unprincipled, ruthless, shameless swindlers who’d cheat a baby out of a pacifier and feel not a twinge of conscience. And do you know who loses? Consumers.
I made decent money as a translator back in Ukraine in 1995-8. However, I found myself in an extremely weird situation where I didn’t know how to spend my money. Restaurants and cafes could easily poison you because nobody prevented the chefs and owners from operating in unhygienic environments. Hair-dressers were extremely likely to destroy your hair once and for all. Dry cleaners would do damage to your best clothes. Banks took your money and closed down. In short, every time you took out your wallet to pay for any goods or services, you got stiffed.
I’m talking about the events of 15-20 years ago. It’s possible that things changed since then, of course. However, even today half of all posts on every FSU blog that I read is dedicated to endless stories of people trying to buy goods and services and getting swindled, poisoned, infected, damaged or robbed. When my mother traveled back to Ukraine a few years ago, she decided to get a pedicure. For the next 3 months, she was trying to cure an infection she got there.
Similar stories happen in North America when people turn to unlicensed service providers out of poverty or inexperience. When I was an undergrad, a friend of mine used the services of an unlicensed amateur braid-maker. After that experience, she didn’t need a braid-maker for a long time to come because she’d lost half of her hair.
This is why all these stories about suffering hair-braiders leave me completely unmoved. I went to school forever to earn the right to practice my craft. I believe that it’s completely fair that I wasn’t allowed to teach my courses and publish my scholarship before getting certified according to high national standards. And I sure as hell hope that some quack who has not gone to the trouble of learning her work will not be allowed to stiff people out of money under false pretenses.
Of course, we could all sacrifice our time and energy and investigate every single person we buy goods or services from. That would be the only alternative to removing the state licensing requirements and the governmental controls on the quality of goods and services. I, however, do not see why I need to waste my life on researching every hairdresser, massage therapist, manicurist, teacher, etc. just in order to let irresponsible people peddle the services they don’t have enough knowledge to provide.
The world is getting more and more complicated every year. We all use a growing variety of products and services. This is why we can’t get bogged down in the frontier mentality of the era where everybody could grow their own food and make their own clothes and rarely ever relied on the paid services of others. One of the signs of mental health is the capacity to process the changes in one’s environment and modify one’s behavior to adapt to them. Let’s remember that before we start bemoaning the passing of times when all those strict licensing laws were not needed. It is as productive as lamenting the end of an era where we could save money by avoiding dentists because most people lost their teeth by the age of 20 anyway.
Clarissa's Blog 
When my mother traveled back to Ukraine a few years ago, she decided to get a pedicure. For the next 3 months, she was trying to cure an infection she got there.
Your mother was very lucky. Some time ago I heard on Russian TV a story about a woman, who went to have a pedicure and got AIDS. In case she ever travels to FSU again, I would tell her this story. It made a huge impression on me.
Of course, we could all sacrifice our time and energy and investigate every single person we buy goods or services from.
Before hearing of libertarians on Internet, I’ve never heard such a thing in RL. It always sounded crazy to me.
Hope you’ll write more posts on politics and history too. As you’ve written about FSU. May be, after you research US history and make opinion on various events, you would write about them too? I would’ve been fascinating.
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I totally believe the story about the infected person. When I was doing an HIV test in Canada, I was really worried. And not because I’d ever had unprotected sex (I hadn’t) but because I knew how careless our dentists were and remembered how we were all given vaccine shots with the same syringe at school.
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What is so wrong about allowing for private companies to certify health standards? While this would not require formal government, it would still need a legal system. The Soviet Union may have been a government, but it was one of the most anti-law systems ever conceived by man. So yes without a legal tradition, things fell apart.
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“What is so wrong about allowing for private companies to certify health standards”
– They have no motivation to be responsible in the process. Potential future legal problems have not stopped anybody from preferring to reap immediate profits today. Or have you not been around in 2007-9? 🙂
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Companies have every reason to care about the long term results when they are not being bailed out by the government. Furthermore it is a matter of personal liberty. It is my right to enter into any private contract I so wish. Are you going to put a government or a gun to my head to stop me from using an unlicensed hair dresser or food producer?
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“Companies have every reason to care about the long term results when they are not being bailed out by the government”
– They might have every reason. Yet, in the majority of cases, they don’t care. Haven’t you noticed that we live in an instant gratification society? A very good, well-known company is going under in front of my eyes right now precisely because the ideas of working for long-term result are alien to the company’s leadership. They need maximum profit now and the future be damned. The owners of the company are past 60, so I kind of understand them.
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It does not matter if they care, because you have the power to fire them from your life whenever you wish by not buying their goods and services. This is not the case with government where you are dependent upon millions of other people to fire government from your life.
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I went to school forever to earn the right to practice my craft. I believe that it’s completely fair that I wasn’t allowed to teach my courses and publish my scholarship before getting certified according to high national standards.
Yes, it is a good thing that there some quality control. But that quality control didn’t come from the government. The hiring committee looked at your achievements and decided to give you a job. The journal editor looked at your scholarship and decided it was good enough to publish.
(You might object that a your university is a government institution. But even “public” universities get most of their money from non-government sources. And they run most of their day to day operations without the governments help. The government certainly doesn’t decided who universities hire.)
Also, customers know which places do a good job cutting hair and which places do a crappy job. Edris Salon can charge more than Supercuts because Edris has a reputation for giving world-class haircuts, while Supercuts has a reputation for giving basic haircuts. The government doesn’t decide who’s allowed to charge $1000 for haircuts, the free market decides.
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I have a very good relationship with my father, so things that “come from the government” do not scare me. 🙂
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@Gudenuf. There is a WORLD of difference between an unattractive/cheap haircut and a lethal one (or one that makes your hair fall out.) Supercuts is clean, safe, and efficient. If someone wants to opt in the “luxury” market, it’s up him/her but it’s nice to know that a service exists that delviers a haircut both cheaply and safely. Eventually the “free market” may push someone out of business that is unsanitary….but not before a lot of people get hurt first. The point of licensing is that it helps prevent major issues from happening at all. And re: universities…..Actually the government has some oversight on all universities–even private ones. There is accreditation, safety standards, privacy standards etc etc. And when the government became more lax about accreditation is when “for-profit” universities began to proliferate (places like University of Phoenix, ITT Tech etc. etc.) And these so-called universities are the scourge not only of higher education but of an educated populace more generally. They never ever should have been allowed accreditation to begin with. So I agree with Clarissa: licensing is crucial and important. Quite frankly I’m shocked at the uproar over the original story. I’m sorry for the woman who lost her braiding business but in the interest of public safety, it was the right thing to do. Anything involving health or the body needs some oversight.
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First, thank you so much for commenting on the article clarissa. I never really even thought about the issue from such an extreme perspective as Dickens or what happened in Russia, but you are correct taken to an extreme terrible things could happen in lawless societies.
However, I think many libertarians (of which I am not completely one) would argue that most of the problems you brought up would only exist with out transparent markets and NO rule of law. There are dozens of review sites (yelp, angie’s list, google reviews etc.) now that make it pretty easy to check up service providers, and frankly if someone messes up hair extremely bad… it would be hard to think they could stick around long (unless they perpetrated COMPLETE fraud, but we do have rule of law.. which was missing in Dickens time and for the most part in Russia to my best understanding).
There are a few places where licensing probably makes sense do to the challenges of getting good information:
1. The food supply: It would be impossible (nearly) & highly inefficient for each consumer to try to verify the cow didn’t have mad cow disease
2. Medical professionals: SOME degree of licensing is right to ensure that medical professionals have basic skills, although the AMA has WAY too much power limiting number of doctors, restricting with nurse practitioners and PA’s can do so that doctor’s wages are artificially high
As the article points out.. the real reason licensing is required in so many other areas is because EXISTING members of that field want to protect their income stream through regulation. MANY of the current members of the cosmetology and other industries didn’t go to school, but are “grandfathered” in, so its ridiculous to assume that the school was needed to be good at your craft.
The part that I find perhaps most paradoxical, at least from a political/ideological perspective, is that these requirements effect lower socio-economical citizens more than anyone else. Normally people think Democrats champion the rights or the “lower class / working people”, but Republicans would counter they pander to them and frankly demean their ability to truly seize opportunities and improve their lives. While this is sometimes political rhetoric, in this situation the Republicans really have the moral high ground (but sadly few politicians focus on the nuanced argument I am making here).
I went to a great school, received a great degree in business and really have the world as my oyster to accomplish what I may. These laws effect me in almost no meaningful way (or any other member of the “middle/upper middle class”). By putting the barrier of $16,000 school in the way (or higher in many cases for degrees/licenses), hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial and hard working individuals from lower socio-economical situations will be denied the chance at a low-cost way to try their talents/dreams/desires/passions to protect the jobs of some citizens who probably are middle class at this point. For this lady to grow a client base and be successful in the long run she would have to be good at what she does, learn how to run a business, learn how to satisfy clients and provide a service that enough people want. If she couldn’t do that, well, she will go out of business. And, if she was a fraud who provided dangerous services (instead of merely bad braiding etc.), I believe the legal system would work in this country to limit her ability to do so (which IS the proper role of government).
I really appreciate you writing this article and your perspective, but I think for the reasons listed above it is not comparable enough to Russia or Dickens time. I am curious if you agree with the structural differences.
BTW, in case anyone is wondering I am NOT doing this so she could braid my hair, although the site of her braiding a white male with short hair would be quite funny 🙂
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“There are dozens of review sites (yelp, angie’s list, google reviews etc.) now that make it pretty easy to check up service providers”
– That’s precisely what I’m saying. You want the burden to pore over websites all day long to fall on me. And I prefer to pay the salary of a person who will do it for me as part of their job. Let everybody do their job. Why should I waste my time on these Angie Lists or whatever? I’d rather spend this time doing the work I’m qualified to do.
“frankly if someone messes up hair extremely bad… it would be hard to think they could stick around long (unless they perpetrated COMPLETE fraud, but we do have rule of law”
– I don’t want to sue anybody after getting my hair ruined. I want it not to get ruined in the first place. What use is it to me to see them punished AFTER I have lost my hair?
“The part that I find perhaps most paradoxical, at least from a political/ideological perspective, is that these requirements effect lower socio-economical citizens more than anyone else. Normally people think Democrats champion the rights or the “lower class / working people”, but Republicans would counter they pander to them and frankly demean their ability to truly seize opportunities and improve their lives. While this is sometimes political rhetoric, in this situation the Republicans really have the moral high ground (”
– Moral high ground consists in allowing an unqualified quack to ruin the hair of women from poor families? That’s some morality. What you are forgetting on your argument is that the people who will suffer from such quacks are precisely the low-income folks who don;t even have access to the Internet to check Angie’s lists. They are the ones most likely to use the services of unlicensed people working from home or the backyard. The Democrats champion the rights of these numerous customers over the rights of a much smaller number of crooks. Nobody should have the right “to improve their lives” by damaging the lives of other people!
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“By putting the barrier of $16,000 school in the way (or higher in many cases for degrees/licenses), hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurial and hard working individuals from lower socio-economical situations will be denied the chance at a low-cost way to try their talents/dreams/desires/passions to protect the jobs of some citizens who probably are middle class at this point. ”
– There is no $16K school in the way. That was an obvious lie of the author of this article. You can get an actual scholarly degree at my good university for less than that. Come on, let’s not be too gullible.
” If she couldn’t do that, well, she will go out of business. And, if she was a fraud who provided dangerous services (instead of merely bad braiding etc.), I believe the legal system would work in this country to limit her ability to do so (which IS the proper role of government).”
– That will totally help the customers who will have lost their hair by that time.
“I really appreciate you writing this article and your perspective, but I think for the reasons listed above it is not comparable enough to Russia or Dickens time. I am curious if you agree with the structural differences.”
– I think by structural differences you mean that one can sue afterwards. Yip-dee-dee. Yet another complication to a working person’s life instead of a simple alternative of licencing.
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The in state tuition per semester at your university is $5k… so about $40k for a degree… at least I am pretty sure. (obviously not posting the link.. but if I am off please correct me)
Also, I know people who have looked at cosmetology and massage therapist degrees and anywhere from 10k-20k is the best you will find for the most part.
Suing afterwards is one structural difference… but another big one is there are a huge number of ways due to technology and our culture that you can see reviews of a provider, ask to call a customer etc. You preach personal responsibility to a LARGE degree here.. so why shouldn’t you have to perhaps do 15 minutes of research before getting your hair braided? And, if you like her.. you would probably use her for the next 10-15 years.. (if you want it braided that long).
When framed that way you think 1000’s of people should be denied a right to climb the economic ladder because individuals can’t be trusted to look stuff up online for 15 minutes?
If licensing came/comes without the required education and is simply a test for BASIC competency, then I would be ok with it perhaps out of a matter of practicality. But when it disrupts many people from having a better life I am not ok with it.
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“The in state tuition per semester at your university is $5k… so about $40k for a degree… at least I am pretty sure. ”
– Only for people from middle-class families with an income of over $50K per year. The absolute minority pays that.
“but another big one is there are a huge number of ways due to technology and our culture that you can see reviews of a provider, ask to call a customer etc.”
– You claimed to care about the poor. What access to technology do they have, in your opinion? I just had to drop a student from my online course because he can’t find a regular access to the internet. Not everybody has 2 computers with unlimited wireless, 3 Kindles and a Blackberry, like I do.
“When framed that way you think 1000′s of people should be denied a right to climb the economic ladder because individuals can’t be trusted to look stuff up online for 15 minutes”
– Please, let’s can the drama, OK? I’m an immigrant from a 3rd world country, yet I climbed all right without damaging anybody’s hair.
“If licensing came/comes without the required education”
– So you want to deprive education providers of jobs? Remember, that will prevent them from climbing the economic ladder. How come you are so squarely on the side of people like this braiding person and not consumers and education providers? You propose to damage a multitude to benefit the few. How did you make the choice that those few are more entitled?
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I too wanted to say RE poor people being hurt the most, but I believe it’s not only them, but middle class folks too. Only rich people, who buy brand names in everything all the time, wouldn’t get hurt.
RE taking time to check, I have many problems, which remain even with 10 computers and 15 Blackberries:
1) Time is money. A very American saying, no? I want to add that mental energy is money too. And it is quite limited. In a middle class family with 2 demanding careers & 2-3 young kids parents don’t have time to breathe. Poor parents working (several) shift(s) don’t have free energy either. It isn’t only a hairdresser, it’s 1001 little things people need, except food.
2) I don’t want my safety depend on people not perpetrating “COMPLETE fraud”. There are always criminals, regardless of any “rule of law”. Some of them in banking and other economic fields (firms, etc) think short term and aren’t punished in any way even now. I said “banking” or “a big firm”, not some tiny interpreter, who can disappear to swindle next town under a different name tomorrow, a la O’Henry stories about lovable crooks.
3) Do you believe everything you see on Internet? 🙂
Many times customers don’t see how good a service is until years pass. F.e. an oven can break too soon (5 years instead of supposed 10) or some part used to fix plumbing can rust. May be those aren’t the best examples, but can’t immediately think of better ones, which nevertheless, exist in multitudes.
May be customers think all is well because not professionals can’t judge from a glance or even a year.
Besides, creating wonderful advertisement for yourself is very cheap. Even if you aren’t Internet savvy, pay a symbolic sum and an expert will make sure 1000 happy “customers” leave glowing reviews. In an age without government control, it would be a great business decision.
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I agree with el. Please note that she and I are speaking from a personal experience of living in a world without governmental controls and not from a vague Libertarian dreams.
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Should parents require licenses in order to raise children? You have a rather low opinion of parents in general. So why would you allow children to suffer all sorts of harm at the hands of unlicensed parents? Clearly raising children is far more important to society than braiding hair.
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I don’t care what’s important to society. Let’s conduct the discussion in the terms that were initially set. I care about not having my hair ruined. As I’m sure everybody knows already, I;m obsessed with my hair. 🙂 🙂
But to answer your question, it would be amazing if we, as a society, got so civilized that obligatory classes on good parenting were offered in high school.
“You have a rather low opinion of parents in general. ”
– Whose parents? Yours or mine? 🙂 🙂
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“But to answer your question, it would be amazing if we, as a society, got so civilized that obligatory classes on good parenting were offered in high school.”
We did have a class on parenting at my high school! It was mandatory for everyone, but I think the school crafted it for the sake of the many pregnant students. It wasn’t what I would call groundbreaking, it just covered the basics of babycare and “life skills”, so we learned the pros and cons of breastfeeding and bottle feeding, how to change a diaper, how to burp a baby, how to balance a checkbook, what to look for in a reliable babysitter, purchasing safe baby accessories like car seats, and various other bits and bobs. If I were in charge of high schools across the land, I would make it four years’ worth of courses, rather than one semester, and cover stuff past babyhood and economic basics. It was a pretty good start though.
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It would be great, also, if such classes communicated the idea that a child is a separate person, a human being in need of respect and personal space. The rights of children could also be taught.
With the class you took, you already know more about the subject than I do, which is a great thing. It is really a good start.
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You miss the point about the consequences of using government. Sure I think people should make a point of learning how to be parents through classes, books and seeking advise. You make a law about this though and all of a sudden you have to be willing to punish people for making unlicensed babies. I am sure as a believer in woman’s reproductive freedom you can recognize the problem in having government agents fining women for not having abortions and even taking their children away to be raised by “licensed” parents.
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“You make a law about this though and all of a sudden you have to be willing to punish people for making unlicensed babies.”
– You’d rather the babies were punished just because they have no way of defending themselves?
” I am sure as a believer in woman’s reproductive freedom you can recognize the problem in having government agents fining women for not having abortions ”
– These are your projections. I’m against the government invading women’s bodies and for the same reason I;m against parents invading their children’s bodies (say, with forced feedings.)
“even taking their children away to be raised by “licensed” parents.”
– You disagree that abused children should be taken away from abusers?
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How are we punishing or physically abusing babies now that we allow any sane, non-criminal, flawed individual to have children? You seem to believe that if we allowed for a board to create “reasonable” standards for how children should be raised that board would not be taken over by either conservative or liberal radicals who will use it as a weapon to promote their ideology.
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“You seem to believe that if we allowed for a board to create “reasonable” standards for how children should be raised that board would not be taken over by either conservative or liberal radicals who will use it as a weapon to promote their ideology.”
– Child protective services already exist, don’t they?
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Taking children from the homes of physically abusive parents is one thing, taking them from the homes of unlicensed parents (which as of now is every parent) is something else.
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“Taking children from the homes of physically abusive parents is one thing, taking them from the homes of unlicensed parents (which as of now is every parent) is something else.”
– My friend, you are talking to yourself. Unlicensed parents and taking children away are 100% your fantasy. All I suggested was a class on parenting in high schools. The rest is your fantasy.
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How many classes should parents have to take? How much should they be charged for it? More importantly, what should be done to people who refuse to take these classes? You cannot call something a law unless you are willing to punish people who break the law. Do you have some other idea as to how such parents may be punished besides for jail, fine or taking the kids away?
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Wow, that’s some resistance. 🙂 OK, once again, this is what I said: “a class on parenting in high schools.” A class means one class. In high school means for free.
“More importantly, what should be done to people who refuse to take these classes”
– Whatever happens to students in American high schools who refuse to take classes. 🙂
“Do you have some other idea as to how such parents may be punished besides for jail, fine or taking the kids away?”
– What parents? I’m talking about high school students. 🙂 🙂 Are they placed in jail for flunking math or not showing up in English lit classroom? 🙂 🙂
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No high school is not free. It is paid for through taxes, which are collected even from people who my oppose things being taught. This violates their liberty. Lets play your scenario out of a simple class. You find yourself going up against a high school version of me who refuses to take the class on principle. (Say I were to decide the class was biased in its theory of child raising and left.) Would you be willing to support not giving me a diploma or not allowing me to raise a child?
To be clear I agree that it would be perfectly reasonable for a private school to offer child rearing classes and even make them mendatory.
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You asked me “How much should they be charged for it?” The answer was that there should be no charges for any specific class. Leah Jane in this very thread shared the story of this kind of a class she took. Nobody paid anything, nobody was placed in jail. Where is the problem?
” You find yourself going up against a high school version of me who refuses to take the class on principle. (Say I were to decide the class was biased in its theory of child raising and left.) Would you be willing to support not giving me a diploma or not allowing me to raise a child?”
– I support the same measures being taken as if you refuse to take math, English, history, etc. A person who is incapable of listening to theories that contradict his or her views without having a tantrum has not been properly socialized. This means that this person has failed the main task of a high school education. Obviously, such person is not ready graduate.
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I don’t have a problem with people who disagree with me, only with having to fund their beliefs. Let us say that this public school class was designed by religious conservatives, who were using it to promote an anti-gay agenda, claiming that gay couples could not make good parents. Would you be willing to support my boycotting the class?
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” Let us say that this public school class was designed by religious conservatives, who were using it to promote an anti-gay agenda, claiming that gay couples could not make good parents. ”
– I have the same opinion of it as a math class that teaches that “Jews cannot make good mathematicians.” This is precisely why we need licensing of teachers. So that they don’t confuse teaching a subject with imparting their boring opinions. Anybody who has taken a methodology of teaching class will know that, irrespective of the content of this utterance, its format is an example of bad teaching.
“I don’t have a problem with people who disagree with me, only with having to fund their beliefs.”
– There should be no discussion of “beliefs” in a learning process. You are an educator, I’m sure you know that. I leave my “beliefs” outside the classroom every time. I;m sure everybody else can do the same. Especially if they are taught to do so during their licensing process.
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What if conservatives are running the licensing boards? A basic principle of liberal political theory is that one always assumes that an institution will fall into the hands of the opposition who will abuse it to the best of their ability. You seem to start from the assumption that your institutions will be run by people from your side, who will do the sorts of things you support despite the evidence from your own life that this is not the case.
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“What if conservatives are running the licensing boards”
– I am not aware of any political bias within the methodology of teaching. 🙂 What would it look like, I wonder? 🙂
“You seem to start from the assumption that your institutions will be run by people from your side, who will do the sorts of things you support despite the evidence from your own life that this is not the case.”
– There are no “sides” in teaching methodology. Just like there is no ideology in the multiplication table. Or driving exams.
Or do you think there is? 🙂 We are talking about basic competency. Either you can park a car or you can’t. Whether you believe in alternative fuels or hybrid cars is not discussed at driving lessons, right?
“your institutions will be run by people from your side, who will do the sorts of things you support despite the evidence from your own life that this is not the case”
– I support professional people practicing the profession they actually learned how to do, that’s all. I want to know that a plumber I called in has been trained and will not destroy my pipes. What his beliefs on abortion are is the last thing on my mind. If he holds the wrong beliefs :-), then that’s his very own misfortune. 🙂
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I believe that there are ways to teach that avoid bias in the narrow sense of the term. This can be done by focusing on method as opposed to results. We agree on that. The issue here is not whether things should be done by professionals, it whether we want government to be involved. It would be nice if we could stick to method, but we know that will not happen if we bring government in. If you want to get an idea as how teaching boards can become political weapons take a look at the Dover case from a few years ago regarding “intelligent design” or what the Texas school board did to history. Could this happen to a parenting class? Bring on the “family values.” I don’t trust the government process to avoid these problems and would rather take my chances with private institutions that I can choose to not use if I so please.
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” If you want to get an idea as how teaching boards can become political weapons take a look at the Dover case from a few years ago regarding “intelligent design” or what the Texas school board did to history.”
– I gather that your response to this is not to teach history at all and hope that most parents will somehow find the money and the desire to pay for private history classes for their children? Given how many people even avoid to purchase health insurance to save money for a new plasma TV, all that we will achieve is a generation of completely illiterate people. That idea scares me a lot more than a few biased education boards.
“I don’t trust the government process to avoid these problems and would rather take my chances with private institutions that I can choose to not use if I so please.”
– As voters, we decide who the government is. We don’t have any such control over any private institution. Do you know that 2/3 of all undergrad classes at Yale are NOT taught by actual professors? Do you think the university reveals that to parents who pay huge tuitions? Not a chance. I’ve personally observed how people get bamboozled right there. My public university, on the other hand, is completely transparent in everything. You could, of course, blame the parents of Yale’s students for not dedicating their lives to researching every single course on the schedule. But people do have lives and not everybody is ready to spend all day investigating everything they pay for. It’s easier to delegate that to governmental officials, The system is not perfect but it’s better than the alternative.
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I do not want the government teaching anything. It should be handled by private schools. Will this lead to the downfall of education in this country? Neither of us know of course. It is reasonable to assume that just as books are printed for the minority of readers there will still schools for those who want them. If you think this is a big risk, remember that there are millions of religious fundamentalists out there who willing to tolerate policies that they believe will send millions of souls to Hell, such as allowing non-believers to raise children. (A position that goes back to at least Thomas Aquinas.) Speaking as a non-PhD, who taught taught at a public university, I fail to see how public universities are more open about whom they hire.
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“I do not want the government teaching anything. It should be handled by private schools. Will this lead to the downfall of education in this country? Neither of us know of course.”
– Are you aware when and how the idea of a compulsory state education arose in Western societies? Do you know what the rate of literacy was before that system was created? Are you really advocating the return to pre-Enlightenment societies and the abandonment of its core values just because of this completely irrational fear of the big bad wolf?
“If you think this is a big risk, remember that there are millions of religious fundamentalists out there who willing to tolerate policies that they believe will send millions of souls to Hell, such as allowing non-believers to raise children.”
– Do the Enlightened values, in your opinion, promote religious fundamentalism? I know you know this stuff since you are a historian. Which is why I’m very surprised to see how your knowledge fails in the view of the irrational fears the word “government” evokes in you.
“Speaking as a non-PhD, who taught taught at a public university, I fail to see how public universities are more open about whom they hire.”
– My university is obligated to report the qualifications and even the salaries of each teaching faculty member on a public access website.
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People in the middle ages were a lot more literate (reading as opposed to writing) than is generally recognized. Education levels went up throughout the early modern period before the rise of mass public school education in the nineteenth century. So I have no reason to assume that public schools were what improved education. The key enlightenment value I support is not iniating force. This applies even when I support the ends. Government is force so I do not support government even when I support its ends. Does this support religious fundamentalists? In a way yes. The main people who have benefited from American religious freedom have been American religious fundamentalists so I consider it a major point as to whether something might benefit them. I should add that one of the major examples of public education working was in Scotland where it was put into place by radical Calvinists to promote their agenda. The fact that your university puts such information on a website is nice, but of little value as most parents will not bother to check.
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“People in the middle ages were a lot more literate (reading as opposed to writing) than is generally recognized.”
– So that’s the kind of literacy you’d like t see around yourself today?
“Education levels went up throughout the early modern period before the rise of mass public school education in the nineteenth century”
– What years specifically and which country? In both Spain and Russia that was absolutely not the case. The massive literacy was achieved in Russian speaking countries ONLY after the introduction of the obligatory literacy programs in the Soviet Union. In Spain, even in the second half of the XIXth century, the majority of the population was illiterate and constant arguments about the need for compulsory education raged for decades.
“The key enlightenment value I support is not iniating force.”
– That’s not a key enlightened value. That’s a deeply Christian idea.
“The main people who have benefited from American religious freedom have been American religious fundamentalists”
– You also have a very strange understanding of American history. Why did so many non-fundamentalist people emigrate to the US, in your opinion? Like the very vaguely religious Jews, for example?
“The fact that your university puts such information on a website is nice, but of little value as most parents will not bother to check.”
– Have you read my entire story? The officials at Yale actively LIE about who teaches what. I’m prevented from doing anything of the kind precisely because I’m at a public university. We are also prevented from spousal hiring for the same reason while at public schools half of the teaching faculty are somebody’s uneducated relative.
“as most parents will not bother to check”
– This means you just agreed with my entire post. 🙂 Then what are we still arguing about? 🙂
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It is just as fair for you to accuse me of trying to bring back pre-modern education as it would be for me to accuse you of supporting Stalinist style education. That being said I think it is telling that you bring up the example of the Soviet Union as being a step forward in education. The fact that the 20th century gave us government education like the Soviet system, I feel, gives me ample reason to be a little paranoid about governments bringing gifts. Soviet education was not about improving the masses, despite the fact that incidentally literacy rates went up, but an attempt to brain wash children and turn them against their parents. In terms of the history of education, I am mainly familiar with the situation in England and France. I never claimed that America was bad for secular people, just that the American tradition of freedom of religion and a separation of Church and State has ironically benefited religious fundamentalists, despite their whining, and played a major role in stopping America from secularizing the way western European countries have. If Yale lies than a parent should be able to sue them or just take their children out. Remember that my support of private businesses is not because they behave wonderfully; on the contrary I expect many of them to misbehave, but it is easier to go after private companies when they do wrong than the government. (Voting matters little, because it requires millions of other people to be able to make changes, as opposed to private businesses which just require your vote to make changes in your own life.) For better or worse, the reason why most parents want to send their children to Yale and will spend thousands doing so is because they believe that the label “Yale” will give their children an advantage. From this perspective it does not matter if they are getting TAs and not professors.
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“That being said I think it is telling that you bring up the example of the Soviet Union as being a step forward in education.”
– Telling of what? My knowledge of history? 🙂 Of course, the Soviet system of education was vastly better that the tsarist. That is news to you?
“Soviet education was not about improving the masses, despite the fact that incidentally literacy rates went up, but an attempt to brain wash children and turn them against their parents.”
– I’m sorry, my friend, you are not prepared to discuss the Soviet education with me. You simply lack the most basic knowledge.
” For better or worse, the reason why most parents want to send their children to Yale and will spend thousands doing so is because they believe that the label “Yale” will give their children an advantage. From this perspective it does not matter if they are getting TAs and not professors.”
– When people start offering speeches that have nothing to do with the subject that is being discusses, I conclude that they have lost the argument. 🙂 Psychoanalyzing the people you have never even met is not a convincing discussion strategy. 🙂 🙂
“Remember that my support of private businesses is not because they behave wonderfully; on the contrary I expect many of them to misbehave, but it is easier to go after private companies when they do wrong than the government. ”
– The last time I “went after” a dishonest company, it was precisely the governmental court system that allowed me to do this. Before I involved the government, there was no remedy available to me.
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Early 20th century Czarist Russia was a conservative despotism that was incompetent, murdered thousands and held millions of people back in superstition and ignorance. The Soviet Union was certainly competent when it came to murdering millions of people and creating a vast propaganda network to hold people in slavery in ways that the Czar never could. (Remember that the Soviet Union you knew and suffered under was the “good” one in that it was “just” corrupt and criminally incompetent.) I am not about to let Stalin off the hook, because he taught people to read. I would sooner give child molesting Catholics priest educators a break. Whatever the real problems there were with the Czar, Russia made a tragic wrong turn in 1917. My comments about Yale were not about Yale or their parents per se but about the economics of college. We may not like it, but a large part of why people go to college is not for an education but to buy a ticket to the better jobs. I think we can agree that this is bad for society and bad for the cause of the humanities, which we both have an interest in protecting. I blame modern liberals for this in that they sold their souls to the government for funding. Turn to private education and perhaps fewer people will be in the classroom, but we will be able to foster a true intellectual elite for the next generation.
Going to the government in order to go after private businesses is one thing (ideally I would want private arbitration courts, but that is for another day), going to the government to go after the government is another.
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“I am not about to let Stalin off the hook, because he taught people to read.”
– What “hook”? All we are discussing is whether the compulsory state system of higher education dramatically raised the literacy levels. yes, it did.
“Whatever the real problems there were with the Czar, Russia made a tragic wrong turn in 1917.”
– You know that I hate the Soviet Union for very personal reasons, right? However, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was a vast improvement over the Tzarist Russian Empire. The Empire was so degenerate that nothing short of such a violent reaction that was the revolution was possible. And in terms of turning childen against their parents, my brilliant great-great-uncle had to renounce his family, his culture and even his name under the tsar because that was the only way a Jew could be a mathematician. His youngest sister got a brilliant education and became a military engineer under Stalin. The fact that she was Jewish made her safe from the persecution of engineers in the 1930ies. She lived to be almost 90 and a passionate Communist to the day she dies. I understand her completely.
History is a lot more complex than the good guys vs bad guys mentality of Hollywood movies. 🙂
“Turn to private education and perhaps fewer people will be in the classroom, but we will be able to foster a true intellectual elite for the next generation.”
– Yale gets a lot more in handouts from the government than absolutely any public university. It just offers nothing in return, that’s all. As for their fostering of an intellectual elite, they have a wide-spread practice of accepting “legacies” and completely stupid people even into graduate programs to milk their rich parents for donations. I’ve been in the same classrooms with that “elite”, so please, don’t make me laugh. I’d never seen a bunch of people who hated reading more (and were doing a PhD in literature) in my life.
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“It would be great, also, if such classes communicated the idea that a child is a separate person, a human being in need of respect and personal space. The rights of children could also be taught.”
That would be most excellent! Learning how to properly communicate with your children and earn their trust should be taught, which is why I am not 100% pleased by this baby-centric approach my class took, because there’s no focus on communication and consent, even of the nonverbal variety babies do, like pulling away or turning their heads. The discourse on parenting, from what I’ve seen, is very odd, because it promotes this myth that from the time a child learns how to talk until they become “moody, unpredictable teenagers”, parenting’s a comparative cakewalk because they can and will tell you what they want and need. That’s not what I remember from growing up.
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I don’t remember hearing about any huge numbers of plane crashes caused by 16 year olds decisding to become airline pilots with no training and licensing. I thus find it hard to believe that no licensing existed at all in Ukraine.
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Actually, the number of plane crashes has been completely atrocious in the FSU countries. I still have regular nightmares of airplanes falling on residential buildings. This is something that happened several times when I was a teenager. In Russia a plane crashes or a boat sinks once a month. Haven’t you heard of the recent tragedies?
And the numbers of people who get behind the wheel of a car without ever undergoing any testing or exams is also very high.
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