{"id":56233,"date":"2011-03-10T04:54:08","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T10:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=56233"},"modified":"2011-03-10T04:54:08","modified_gmt":"2011-03-10T10:54:08","slug":"jerry-pournelle-on-public-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=56233","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Pournelle on Public Education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jerrypournelle.com\/view\/2011\/Q1\/view665.html#Wednesday\" target=\"_blank\">Read it.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The only rational purpose of a tax paid school system is to      produce more productive and better citizens. If it doesn&#8217;t accomplish that,      there is no justification for making everyone pay for it. There is certainly      no justification for taxing a person on a $44,000 income to pay salary and      benefits including pensions to someone making $50,000 simply because the      teacher is entitled to the money. (In California the top state income tax      bracket starts at $44,000, and I think no tenured teacher makes less than      $50,000. If those numbers don&#8217;t apply in your state, supply your own, but      you get the idea). The most effective way to get better and more productive      citizens is to allocate resources in a way that benefits those who can      benefit the most: make sure the best and the brightest regardless of their      race or social or economic status get the most education. If you have a      little more time to spend with a student, put that time into make the bright      ones learn more rather than trying to make the dummies just a little less      uninformed.\u00a0 Of course that is now what we do: the whole system, and      particularly No Child Left Behind, is geared in the opposite direction. You      can ameliorate that a bit by assigning the best and the brightest teachers      to the best and the brightest students, but you can&#8217;t if the unions are      allowed to negotiate the work rules. You certainly can&#8217;t accomplish much      when saddled with tenure and seniority rules.<\/p>\n<p>The American school system is a bad parody of an optimum      allocation of resources, and nearly everyone knows it, but we always talk as      if it were not so. Of course we never discuss the basic premises of public      education to begin with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read it. The only rational purpose of a tax paid school system is to produce more productive and better citizens. If it doesn&#8217;t accomplish that, there is no justification for making everyone pay for it. There is certainly no justification for taxing a person on a $44,000 income to pay salary and benefits including pensions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-think-about-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56234,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56233\/revisions\/56234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}