NationStates Jolt Archive

Rate, if you would be so kind, which of these issues are more important.


Healthcare
Education
Construction and Maintenance
Defence
Police
Public Services (including fire engines.)
Business
Tax Cuts
Gay Marriage
Abortion

education. From that one, all others naturally develop.

Defence - without the security to protect your people you are failing in your primary duty. Once you are secure you can look after the other things

Education, followed by tax cuts.

Would a driving ambition to privatise healthcare qualify as a concern?

I'll also go for Education, it is realy the prime, and once that is sorted all other things follow.

Like dude, where are the deficits? Or are you including them in tax cuts? Getting rid of the deficits if the most important thing because you want have any money to do anything else if they get too out of hand. After NOT KILLING PEOPLE that is.

Hmmm what stage of development is this country at or are we talking about what the priority should be for an exisitng developed nation like UK or US?

Education, followed by defense, followed by gay rights(and that's a very close gap between those three) followed by tax cuts, and then the rest follow from there.

Education- Because all thing start with it.
Defence- Because without it your not safe.
Police- To get all those retarded drivers off the street.
then....
Tax cuts and everyything else.

without "welfare" and infrastructure, no government has any reason to exist.

healthcare and education come under both.

as, in a sense does housing.

environmentaly harmonious
energy and transportation are of course infrastructure

and nutrition is perhapse "welfare".

there is no infrasteructural issue in which environment does not play a role
and need to be respected.

moraly, every living organism has a right not to be discriminated against.

perhaps the most important issue would be to stop digging our selves holes of crysis to have to dig our selves out of.

pre emptive crysis prevention we can all participate in by choosing our priorities objectively, and NOT on an 'us OR them' basis but one of us AND 'them'.

=^^=
.../\...

education
healthcare
business
defence
police

educated, healthy, busy and safe

Education. Because without it, your country is nothing.

Environment/Ecology.

Law and order, defence and then education and health equally.

Law and order, defence and then education and health equally.
You'd rather have uneducated police and soldiers than a healthy, productive society?

(Warning: long post, but it's a point that I simply cannot see a pithy or concise way to make.)

Acutally, I'm going to say none of them is the most important. In particular, I'm going to discuss the reason that emphasizing education is a blind alley. (And I'll note I'm _playing_ in NS with a country dedicated to taking all opportunities to educate it's population!) I do agree with folks here in theory...but...

But the idea "education underlies everything, so improving education improves everything" disregards one thing: the way education is practiced in all the developed countries currently is monstrously wasteful. Whether there's plenty of money or no money. Whether the children are mainly babysat (The USA) or whether they are under some compulsion to actually participate (Japan). Regardless of anything I discern.

Why ?

Well, to start with...a really good education requires an exceptionally skilled person to deliver. Not only must they
-be smart enough to know the subject inside out _and_ the "big picture" in which the skills within it fit
-be persuasive and an engaging public speaker
-have tireless attention to bearing in mind the differences between adults and children for perceptual differences and tailoring the lesson to those needs (and able to "speak their language" regarding kids without coming
across as phony or patronizing)
-be well organized so that they keep "on track" but at the same time adapt the flow of the curricula to the lessons that are more or less easy than expected
- constantly explain the relevance of the skills taught to the children's lives and goals (and helping them to think about and adopt long term goals!)
- Accomodate the four different learning styles and make sure that no one is failing to get the point because the _format_ of the information is a barrier to learning ?

It's a _damned_ tall order. Yes, a reasonably invested and happy teacher can probably avoid any abysmal shortcomings in most of this. But if you want your students to truly _remember_ and be _able_ in the skills taught...you need more talent from the teacher than you can commonly find.

Now, there is another side of this equation that is a problem too. Teacher to student is a _relationship_. It requires engagement on _both_ sides. How many children have either domestic issues or psychological issues that stand between them and engagement ?

As far as I saw, scholastic accomplishment rests on two major variables. One is how committed the child is to the process of school. This rests on how well the parents have made it clear that it is important_ and at least partially convinced the child of the truth of this. And this is mostly a proxy for economic status. (Though there is a slight bimodality (with a much much smaller peak) around the parents who are upwardly mobile, even if they are starting out low on the socioeconomic scale.)

The second is how the temperment of the child matches up with the task of sitting quietly doing work that seems intrinscially pointless for minutes or hours at a time. And how many of the scholastic skills go with their temperment. Like, I saw kids who would at least listen to the teacher, ask a few questions, do some of the reading...I could tell they hadn't paid unfailing attention to all these activities, but the difference with the ones who had not was absolutely clear.

Then there were the keeners who were good at most activities, but had a few holes. Their levels of achievement varied a bit, depending on how important their most favored activities were to the overall process. (For example, my peer Anthony was really good at presentations and reports and fairly good at tests, but he was fairly weak at problem solving, debate, and "the big picture". It was obvious what he was interested in. Both in my own learning and that of others I seldom saw anyone work _really_ hard at anything that didn't agree with their interests. The few who did had my undying respect.)

Then about 1 in 100 or so kids were "superstars": adept and interested in the entire curricula with good natural talents undelying this and supportive parents (albeit a few had parents a bit on the iron handed side, but better too inflexible than indifferent to their child's education, immo).

There are two points I'm driving at here. First, most of the kids are not getting much out of the process. It's not that the teachers are lazy or stupid; it's that the task is too compicated and what they end up doing is being the operators for a sorting machine which identifies "which kids have traits X, Y, Z etc" rather than interacting with each child to identify their strengths, cultivate them, teach them awarness of their weaknesses, and how to overcome shortcomings there.

Also, education is _social_ interaction , which 25% of the kids (who are introverts) need badly (plus whatever % have psych issues) is pretty much ignored. That was a complicated issue totally beyond the scope of the training of the teachers I grew up with (I'm 36) and even my friend who just finished a teaching program a few years ago....he's absorbed the lessons they're starting to teach, but that's because he's exceptionally empathic and a very gregarious person. Most teachers in training are not receiving instruction tailored to "make them see the light" on this.

So the bulk of the human talent in the education system is wasted.

Not only is the talent wasted, but most children come out of "the system" already suffering from "the alienation of labor". Even the ones who do well in school tend to be used to looking at any intellectual activity as "something that other people _force_ me to do" and dedicate their "free time" to _avoiding_ anything that has to do with thinking, developing their skills, or taking on "projects". There are exceptions, but they seem few and far between.

School is mostly a social process that gets children ready for a highly structured and hierarchical work enivornment. Where they are expected to conform to the employers' needs rather than there being any attempt to "fit the tool to the task", much less other intelligent managment practices. A world where the right of a subordinate to (politely) challenge a superior on a flaw in logic or procedure or even draw attention to this is mostly absent.

It is a world that itself is rooted in the ignorance of managers and administrators who are "Peter Principled" that is, they have been promoted repeatedly until they end up in a job they cannot do well, and there they stay. (and many people reach this point relatively early, to boot, and thus will have LONG working lives in positions they are not really proficient at, but not quite bad enough to fire.)

The problem with saying "well, just spend more money on education" is that I live in a province with high per pupil spending and the experiences my younger friends and relatives report are not substantially different from my own. Yes, the system makes "reforms"....but they are tiny and incremental and tailored to the reality that you can't radically increase the requests for funding. We have doubled the spending over 15 years, which is a fairly steep rate of growth (@5%/year) but some changes cannot be done piecemeal.

For example, immo, you would need about half the current classroom size if you wanted to make significant progress in covering all the issues I mentioned. Society could pay for this expenditure. But I still question how much it would help. As far as I can see, you'd need about 1 professional per 4-6 kids. That's a HUGE increase in spending.

There might be shortcuts for really specialized tasks where you could offering non-cash or small monetary incentives to retired or disabled folks who demonstrate aptitude, to fill in the gaps. (Thought I can see teacher's unions would have a bloody fit over such as threatening their wage scale or the availability of positions).

I'm pretty sure we don't have enough teachers to _fill_ these positions. It would take an effort comparable to a national emergency to get a comprehensive reform package together.

And it would take some gripping vision to make _parents_ commit to the changes needed on _their_ end with sufficient frequency. To muster the legal and social pressure to make them clean up their act and provide a better home socially and emotionally for their children. And for the government to offer them the resources to assist in this monumental undertaking.

Remember, most people who are not skilled in an area _badly_ overestimate how well they understand matters relating to it. Thus, the worse your ignorance is, the more you will refuse to admit it, much less remedy it.

And most people would go "that sounds like a lot of work, the system as it is mostly works". Yes, it does. But the fundamental flaws remain, and those flaws are like chains on the efficiency of the economy and the happiness and productivity of the workers. It all starts with education. But it's a paradox. If you can't prove there's a good reason to make a huge sacrifice to turn education upside down, almost no one is going to endorse the change; but without having made these reforms, most people are _ignorant_ of the reasons that the changes would be necessary.

I mean, I grew up in Canada, which has a middling good public education system (and a fairly small private one); compared to the US public system, I've seen first hand that Americans are more ignorant and less skilled on average. However....I haven't seen a huge impact of this education upon either the workplace or upon public life.

Why ? Because government is still an elitist, top down institution because most people don't have the understanding of how it works and why their participation is vital. Most people don't have any desire to volunteer any substained labor after school has finished with them.

Thus whatever problems presented to society are settled by tiny circles of bureaucrats who are like this one Dilbert Cartoon. ( "Isn't it funny how the main skill you're taught is the one you tend to suggest as the solution for any problem ?" (Manager looking guy) "We should do a Swenson-Cash Flow Analysis "(Dilbert) "We should make a spreadsheet" (Burly looking janitor guy)"We should just kick some hiney!" (Porqupine)"Quills ! we must stick them with quills! It's our only hope!")

The lack of flexibility, wholistic skills development, awareness of "the big picture" (and the parts of it which you by your own nature are blind or challenged to see!)....all of these are products of the education system's shortfalls. Those of us with a lot of education can see how the right knowledge in the right places can make a huge difference.

And opening a seperate can of worms, ethical character rests on being able to learn a moral framework, it's objective validity, _and_ to discover one which satisfies _your emotional needs_. We have a few pilot programs in the USA that try to introduce students to the subject. But there is no thorough, grade after grade effort. And one is badly needed. But it would require again more flexiblity and investmetn of talent than we're willing to suddenly pay in extra funding. (first, the nightmare of reconciling how to teach a non-sectarian approach that would be reasonably free from bias...or at least straighforward about biases.)

To summarize, the flaws of the system are that whatever changes are made, they will only "take" on a small, small part of the student body. Yet the only way to "Reach" everyone on every lesson that's relevant and important....would take huge huge efforts. More than you could convince taxpayers of, because the ignorance the education system leaves most of them with renders them incapable of seeing why the large sacrifices would be necessary, much less urgent.

I'm not sure what the solution is. But I am sure that the marginal value of higher education funding is not the way to go, at least as a panacea. Even though theoretically it should be.