Personal success (Split thread)

[bolo]

Without a voucher system to apply market pressure to schools or any private alternatives, how would parents apply pressure to schools to improve ?

By voting?

By voting for whom? The only party that would want to do this would be Labour. The Tory manifestos would almost certainly have 'make private education legal again' in them. Labour do not have a good track record in recent years. I have no doubt that a Labour party controlled by momentum would massively increase spending on schools to little beneficial effect.

I won't attempt to answer this for the UK, as I don't know enough about the UK system for funding and managing schools.

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, population 1.2 million including 190 thousand pupils in public schools. The public schools are run by an elected county school board. The schools budget is decided by an elected county board of supervisors and derives largely from local property taxes at rates set by the board of supervisors. The elections for these offices are contested and serious, and candidates are expected to (a) know stuff and (b) take positions. Fairfax County has a relatively sensible electorate and a healthy property tax base, so this system results in good schools.

It doesn't work as well elsewhere, partly because poorer areas have less of a tax base and partly because the electorate in some places defines "improve the schools" as "don't teach evolution, make trans kids use the wrong bathrooms, fund the football team in preference to art or physics or French, and spend as little as you can get away with because I don't like paying taxes".

[dyqik]

By voting?

By voting for whom? The only party that would want to do this would be Labour. The Tory manifestos would almost certainly have 'make private education legal again' in them. Labour do not have a good track record in recent years. I have no doubt that a Labour party controlled by momentum would massively increase spending on schools to little beneficial effect.

I won't attempt to answer this for the UK, as I don't know enough about the UK system for funding and managing schools.

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia, population 1.2 million including 190 thousand pupils in public schools. The public schools are run by an elected county school board. The schools budget is decided by an elected county board of supervisors and derives largely from local property taxes at rates set by the board of supervisors. The elections for these offices are contested and serious, and candidates are expected to (a) know stuff and (b) take positions. Fairfax County has a relatively sensible electorate and a healthy property tax base, so this system results in good schools.

It doesn't work as well elsewhere, partly because poorer areas have less of a tax base and partly because the electorate in some places defines "improve the schools" as "don't teach evolution, make trans kids use the wrong bathrooms, fund the football team in preference to art or physics or French, and spend as little as you can get away with because I don't like paying taxes".

A quick wander around the East Sussex County Council website's education and learning section shows me that the LEA is run by the County Council. So you can vote at the County Council level as well as national level based on Education policies.
You can also volunteer become a school parent-governor, which are, I think (?), elected by parents of pupils in the school.
You can also volunteer to become a parent-governor representative to the County Council.
I don't know what extent of control that offers, but governors and parent-governor representatives are also major routes for feedback from parents to school administrations that does not require voting or voucher schemes. Just talking to people.

In Massachusetts, schools are usually overseen by a town level elected School Board. In my small town of 10,000, there are several elected representatives on the school board (and only one of each level of school). There's also an advisory board, which is appointed and volunteer based, including a mandatory non-parent and non-teacher lay position. I'm pretty sure there's state level oversight as well. And I've probably got the names of the boards wrong though.

[Brightonian]

End private education. Its not allowed in lots of countries which get along fine.

The World Bank has data here on private secondary school enrollment as a percentage of total secondary school enrollment. The only countries shown as zero are Algeria, Belarus, Ireland, Montenegro, and Uzbekistan.

???? Lots of private secondary schools in Ireland.

[bolo]

Apologies. If you click through on the World Bank data, Ireland is indeed not quite zero. It's about 0.3%, which the table I linked to rounds to zero.

[sheldrake]

A quick wander around the East Sussex County Council website's education and learning section shows me that the LEA is run by the County Council. So you can vote at the County Council level as well as national level based on Education policies.

You can also volunteer become a school parent-governor, which are, I think (?), elected by parents of pupils in the school.
You can also volunteer to become a parent-governor representative to the County Council.
I don't know what extent of control that offers, but governors and parent-governor representatives are also major routes for feedback from parents to school administrations that does not require voting or voucher schemes. Just talking to people.

That doesn't allow influence over the national curriculum or professional teaching standards negotiated between Dept of Education and Teaching Unions. Political engagement at local level is much lower, generally. You'd need to repatriate some meaningful powers I think.

[sheldrake]

I found this on Finnish education

https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/1 ... -debunked/

8) There are no private schools in Finland.
A Little of Both. Finland has common legislation for both private (state subsidized) and public (city or state owned) schools. Last year there were 85 private schools in Finland serving approximately 3% of the whole student population.

There is a lot more here that talks about the equitable and very unbureaucratic sounding nature of Finnish education, including better conditions for teachers that make it a more attractive profession for people who could earn more elsewhere. I'm open to ideas here.

Yes, as mentioned above, there are some privately run but wholly state funded schools in Finland. You can find out more here.

Privately run schools that also charge fees are not accredited.

Here is the fee schedule for a private international school in Helsinki. The fees are not fully state funded.

https://ishelsinki.fi/fee-schedule-2019-2020/

leading to https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GmcTJu ... yYoPi/view

[dyqik]

A quick wander around the East Sussex County Council website's education and learning section shows me that the LEA is run by the County Council. So you can vote at the County Council level as well as national level based on Education policies.

You can also volunteer become a school parent-governor, which are, I think (?), elected by parents of pupils in the school.
You can also volunteer to become a parent-governor representative to the County Council.
I don't know what extent of control that offers, but governors and parent-governor representatives are also major routes for feedback from parents to school administrations that does not require voting or voucher schemes. Just talking to people.

That doesn't allow influence over the national curriculum or professional teaching standards negotiated between Dept of Education and Teaching Unions. Political engagement at local level is much lower, generally. You'd need to repatriate some meaningful powers I think.

Why would you want local control over national standards? Generally having disparate standards around the country is bad for equality and for deprived areas - look to the variance between US states for illustrations of that.

[sheldrake]

Why would you want local control over national standards? Generally having disparate standards around the country is bad for equality and for deprived areas - look to the variance between US states for illustrations of that.

Opting out of national standards is available to the rich. To be clear, I don't believe absolute equality is desirable or possible here, I'm asking how state school education can be levelled up. The national standards play a significant role in the way children are educated in a state school. To improve them, I think parents need a lever.

[dyqik]

Why would you want local control over national standards? Generally having disparate standards around the country is bad for equality and for deprived areas - look to the variance between US states for illustrations of that.

Opting out of national standards is available to the rich. To be clear, I don't believe absolute equality is desirable or possible here, I'm asking how state school education can be levelled up. The national standards play a significant role in the way children are educated in a state school. To improve them, I think parents need a lever.

That's more of an argument for adding local standards that exceed national standards, not for opting out of national standards.

[Woodchopper]

I found this on Finnish education

https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/1 ... -debunked/



There is a lot more here that talks about the equitable and very unbureaucratic sounding nature of Finnish education, including better conditions for teachers that make it a more attractive profession for people who could earn more elsewhere. I'm open to ideas here.

Yes, as mentioned above, there are some privately run but wholly state funded schools in Finland. You can find out more here.

Privately run schools that also charge fees are not accredited.

Here is the fee schedule for a private international school in Helsinki. The fees are not fully state funded.

https://ishelsinki.fi/fee-schedule-2019-2020/

leading to https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GmcTJu ... yYoPi/view

Exactly! If you look at the accreditation section of the web site you’ll see that it isn’t accredited by the Finnish Ministry of Education. The diplomas offered aren’t Finnish qualifications.

I expect that the parents who send their children there are expat workers who are on fairly short contracts or postings. So they send their children there where they can receive the equivalent of a US high school diploma or Baccalaureate.

[sheldrake]

Exactly! If you look at the accreditation section of the web site you’ll see that it isn’t accredited by the Finnish Ministry of Education. The diplomas offered aren’t Finnish qualifications.

I don't think that matters very much. I don't think any of the universities in any of the commonly cited 'Global top 30' legal tables are going to care about that. Probably not a problem for entry to Finnish universities either, unless they ban all foreign students from attending.

I expect that the parents who send their children there are expat workers who are on fairly short contracts or postings. So they send their children there where they can receive the equivalent of a US high school diploma or Baccalaureate.

I wouldn't assume that, several Finnish names on the School board https://ishelsinki.fi/school-board/

Now, would you guess that the Finnish parents here are representative of the general Finnish workforce, or do you suspect they might be more likely to be international business people or members of some other (what in the UK or America might be called upper-middle class) elite?

Can't be sure, but they're less unlikely to be factory workers or call centre staff given the fees.

I'm open to ideas from Finnish education, but the mere fact that most of it is not private is a red herring IMHO. Tell me what it is that's good, not what it isn't.

Level-up, not down. To middle class waverers like me, the Labour party always sounds like a kind of nasty little club for people bitter about others' success when it bases policies on 'levelling down' (I think this is the problem with Corbynism in a nutshell). Not a winning strategy.

[Woodchopper]

The World Bank has data here on private secondary school enrollment as a percentage of total secondary school enrollment. The only countries shown as zero are Algeria, Belarus, Ireland, Montenegro, and Uzbekistan.

Interesting, as far as I can tell from some of the individual data points that list includes privately run schools which are though state funded and don’t have selective entrance.

I shall be more precise and suggest ending primary and secondary schools funded by fees paid directly by parents and which have selective entrance (let oversubscribed schools award places via a lottery).

The aim being so that it’s harder for parents to buy their children a better education.

I think you'd have two unintended effects here

1) You reduce one of the most powerful incentives that parents have to work and be financially succesful

2) You don't actually have a suggestion to improve free education here, you're levelling down rather than levelling up. Equality that's achieved by just knocking the rich down is not healthy or useful equality.

I'm open suggestions to improve state education that may cost extra money. What do you have?

Disclosure: My daughter attends a private school. There is no tradition of this in my family and I would've been perfectly happy for her to go to the same kind of state school I went to.

5 years ago we moved to a new town and the state school she was admitted to locally wasn't good enough. It was relatively safe and friendly but she described most of the classes were spent with the kids just shouting across the room and chatting with each other whilst the teachers frantically attempted to get people to stop sitting on the desks and quieten down. The french teacher was a supply teacher who didn't speak french and just put on videos about 'life in other countries' for them to watch. I took her out after a couple of months. Just banning private school would not in any way automatically improve that school. You need proposals to level up, not level down.

Let's say you put my taxes up £500 per month. If you fix state education then you've actually saved me money because even relatively obscure private day school costs more than three times that. Tell me what you're going to spend the money on. I'm listening.

Apologies Sheldrake, I haven’t had time to give you a decent answer on how to reform the education system. And I’ll be busy for a bit so I won’t be able to.

[plodder]

Although there is a danger in telling people that success is mainly luck, there’s a greater danger in telling them it’s all due to hard work and gumption. The latter is the route to pointless and fruitless wage slavery for millions, who would be far better off focussing their efforts in improving equality of opportunity.

I do not agree with this at all. Their work is not pointless and fruitless, they create and maintain the abundant society we live in now. What exactly would you have them do instead? how exactly would these masses of people, pulled from their factories, call centres & offices 'improve equality of opportunity' whilst nobody is cleaning the toilets, delivering the food, processing the tax returns etc..?

Most of the population have to do fairly boring sh.t for 40 hours a week for most of their adult life just to pay the bills. They're not doing this because somebody has planned an intricate series of interlocking pointless tasks to keep them busy, they're doing these tasks because somebody else needs them to and is willing to pay them. This interlocking web of 'stuff people want doing' is how all the mundane things we depend on for a 21st-century life is kept ticking. Without it, life would be *way* more barbaric and uncomfortable than it is now. There would actually be less surplus wealth and time available for people to study the humanities, pursue scientific research, create art etc..

But in order for them to do this we need to collectively recognise the significant inequalities in opportunity we currently have.

People growing up in the UK today have opportunities undreamt of by their ancestors. If you try to eliminate all the differences in how much support parents give their children, you would remove one of the greatest incentives for work that there is.

Societies that believe in the value of individual effort and reward it are more prosperous.

The are stlll big swathes of the Earth where success is actually more dependent on luck than it is here in Britain, and yet many of those societies believe more in their own effort than we do. That's a part of how their economies grow so fast and why when people from those societies emigrate here they often end up more successful than the 'indigenous' within a generation.

There's a really seductive but dangerous tone to the 'life's unfair' narrative.

This deserves a proper response and I don’t have time right now: but in the meantime it’s important not to confuse “having a job” with “knocking yourself silly because Cinderella”

Right-oh. We need to recognise that wage slavery creates opportunities relative to the past, but also reduces opportunities relative to the present.

In other words, we can do and have things that our parent's couldn't, but we can't do things that some of our peers can, because we're priced out. And our parent's didn't see quite the same stratification, and it's getting worse. Can we agree on this?

So what this part of the debate boils down to is how we decide which of these (progress compared to the past vs present unfairness) is most important and for that we need to agree how we define, slice, measure and compare them.

For the former we can look at trends in life expectancy, literacy, health (including the kinds of things that end up killing people), the usual.

But that doesn't tell the whole story. I suspect it was easier for a poor person in the 1980's to become a novelist or a musician or an artist for example, because it was pretty easy to get unemployment benefit compared to now, and there might be some research into this somewhere - I've not found any. It was certainly easier for people to get secure housing, with all the benefits that brings, and I think people also likely had lower levels of personal debt - so it would be interesting to know how much our improved standard of living relies on debt. Also there's a bit of a malaise out there as well that's difficult to define but might be perceptible in use of things like anti-depressants. These are all signifiers (to me) of increased stratification, and I think that they also stem in part from the "just keep grinding away and you'll make it" mentality.

These elements of stratification are mainly rooted in chance rather that poor judgement.

[plodder]

Apologies Sheldrake, I haven’t had time to give you a decent answer on how to reform the education system. And I’ll be busy for a bit so I won’t be able to.

Lol.

One point: Sheldrake's central argument is that the main incentive for people to deliberately work extremely hard to thrive in their careers is to provide for their children. I wonder if this is the case, because most adults have kids, most adults have jobs, most parents consider they try their best at parenting and most adults do not deliberately and willing work extremely hard and do not thrive in their careers.

[plodder]

I also wonder if people who strive for extreme personal success (relative to their roots) just have a bit more interest in their own personal psychodramas for whatever reason.

[sheldrake]

Apologies Sheldrake, I haven’t had time to give you a decent answer on how to reform the education system. And I’ll be busy for a bit so I won’t be able to.

Lol.

One point: Sheldrake's central argument is that the main incentive for people to deliberately work extremely hard to thrive in their careers is to provide for their children. I wonder if this is the case, because most adults have kids, most adults have jobs, most parents consider they try their best at parenting and most adults do not deliberately and willing work extremely hard and do not thrive in their careers.

There's a range of drive and ability, like a bell curve. The centre point of the bell curve can shift based on cultural/policy signals.

[sheldrake]

Right-oh. We need to recognise that wage slavery creates opportunities relative to the past, but also reduces opportunities relative to the present.

In other words, we can do and have things that our parent's couldn't, but we can't do things that some of our peers can, because we're priced out. And our parent's didn't see quite the same stratification, and it's getting worse. Can we agree on this?

Yes.

But that doesn't tell the whole story. I suspect it was easier for a poor person in the 1980's to become a novelist or a musician or an artist for example, because it was pretty easy to get unemployment benefit compared to now, and there might be some research into this somewhere - I've not found any. It was certainly easier for people to get secure housing, with all the benefits that brings, and I think people also likely had lower levels of personal debt - so it would be interesting to know how much our improved standard of living relies on debt. Also there's a bit of a malaise out there as well that's difficult to define but might be perceptible in use of things like anti-depressants. These are all signifiers (to me) of increased stratification, and I think that they also stem in part from the "just keep grinding away and you'll make it" mentality.

These elements of stratification are mainly rooted in chance rather that poor judgement.

Have you ever considered that this cultural malaise may be caused by things not associated with right-of-centre politics? e.g. easy and common family breakup, increasing social acceptance of use of psychoactive drugs, lack of transcendent meaning in people's lives as 'big picture' things like religion have been ripped away and discarded ?

Lots of cultures have an emphasis on work ethic. The west, and especially western Europe, is unusual in it's tolerance, and even encouragement, of its young people to spend significant effort complaining about everything and wasting their lives on nihilistic self-indulgence.

There's lots of choice here, but it's often intergenerational.

[sheldrake]

I also wonder if people who strive for extreme personal success (relative to their roots) just have a bit more interest in their own personal psychodramas for whatever reason.

Some are definitely chased by demons. Some of them just have higher energy levels etc.. so the perceived effort is sustainable for them.

[plodder]

Have you ever considered that this cultural malaise may be caused by things not associated with right-of-centre politics? e.g. easy and common family breakup, increasing social acceptance of use of psychoactive drugs, lack of transcendent meaning in people's lives as 'big picture' things like religion have been ripped away and discarded ?

Lots of cultures have an emphasis on work ethic. The west, and especially western Europe, is unusual in it's tolerance, and even encouragement, of its young people to complain about everything and waste their lives on nihilistic self-indulgence.

That's an interesting perspective. Perhaps with a stronger Christian tradition, like in rural Holland or much of Africa, we'd have a more stable society. But that stability often limits opportunity which is why people kick against it, especially as they get to be independently wealthy (which is what has happened in the West, i.e. kids move from rural Holland to Amsterdam).

So I don't agree that "permissiveness" is as insidious as economics or deliberate policies to protect the rich. Scott Galloway is strong on this stuff, and this article contains lots of good nuggets. His comparison over time of the Nasdaq (10% of highest income earners own 84% of stocks) vs minimum wage is illuminating, and this is a good summary.

https://www.profgalloway.com/unremarkables

We have, traditionally, elected leaders who cut the lower branches off trees to ensure other saplings get sunlight....The uber-wealthy paid a tax rate of 70% in the fifties, 47% in the eighties, and 23% at present — a lower tax rate than the middle class. Taxes on the poor and middle class have largely stayed the same. We’ve exploded the debt so rich people pay less tax. If money is the transfer of work and time, we’ve decided our kids will need to work more in the future, and spend less time with their families, so wealthy people can pay lower taxes today. If that sounds immoral, trust your instincts.

It feels as if something has changed. Gerrymandering, money in politics, lack of a shared experience among Americans, social-media-fueled rage, and an idolatry of innovators have led to a faustian bargain: the innovators (lords) capture the majority of the gains, and the 99% (serfs) get an awesome phone, a $4,000 TV, great original scripted television, and Mandalorian action figures delivered within 24 hours.

[plodder]

gah, dp

[sheldrake]

That's an interesting perspective. Perhaps with a stronger Christian tradition, like in rural Holland or much of Africa, we'd have a more stable society. But that stability often limits opportunity which is why people kick against it, especially as they get to be independently wealthy (which is what has happened in the West).

I don't think it needs to be Christian (I'm not a Christian myself), but we've mostly lost any sense of being part of a larger whole and we've basically losing the cultural constraints that stopped us doing things like 'choosing to be unemployed for a decade to smoke weed and go to festivals' or 'abandoning our children within a few months of birth'.

People are really powerfully effected by their parents splitting up (I know it seems better than the alternatives sometimes), I wouldn't discard it as something having a cultural effect.

So I don't agree that "permissiveness" is as insidious as economics or deliberate policies to protect the rich. Scott Galloway is strong on this stuff, and this article contains lots of good nuggets. His comparison over time of the Nasdaq (10% of highest income earners own 84% of stocks) vs minimum wage is illuminating, and this is a good summary.

I agree there's a problem here and I think the unrestrained greed at the top is actually a symptom of the same problems I mentioned above. On a personal level, our political leaders generally seem like a pale shadow in terms of personal accomplishment and integrity of the kind of people who led us 75 years ago. They just seem more selfish and childish.

It feels as if something has changed. Gerrymandering, money in politics, lack of a shared experience among Americans, social-media-fueled rage, and an idolatry of innovators have led to a faustian bargain: the innovators (lords) capture the majority of the gains, and the 99% (serfs) get an awesome phone, a $4,000 TV, great original scripted television, and Mandalorian action figures delivered within 24 hours.

We now live in a society with an explicitly materialistic underlying ethos. Marxism was as materialistic an ideology as Thatcherism in its own way. People are shorn of the higher purposes which gave them ethical guidance and a sense of shared destiny.

If you read, say, what Roger Scruton believed, you'd find somebody from the right concerned about pretty much the same things you are.

[sheldrake]

I should add, I definitely don't think Saint Greta is a viable replacement for this lost ethos. She's leading a doomsday cult, not a life-affirming social movement.

[plodder]

Well, that's what decades of consumer-driven capitalism will give you. Everything can be bought or sold, there's a labour market, we're encouraged to commoditise ourselves etc. I don't think you can blame "liberalism" for ushering this in, rather capitalism ushered the old values out via the medium of 24 hour delivery of Mandalorian figures (as Scott Galloway puts it).

Greta's a child and she's a single issue campaigner, not heralding a new social movement.

As an aside, lots of interesting ideas are presented at things like Burning Man, Occupy etc (even if they're swamped in self-indulgent hippy bollocks). Some things that will be considered normal (perhaps gender fluidity for example) in a decade or so tend to crop up in places like these.

[sheldrake]

Well, that's what decades of consumer-driven capitalism will give you. Everything can be bought or sold, there's a labour market, we're encouraged to commoditise ourselves etc. I don't think you can blame "liberalism" for ushering this in, rather capitalism ushered the old values out via the medium of 24 hour delivery of Mandalorian figures (as Scott Galloway puts it).

I'm not blaming 'Liberalism' I'm blaming 'rootless materialism' which can present itself as Thatcherite or Socialist.

As an aside, lots of interesting ideas are presented at things like Burning Man, Occupy etc (even if they're swamped in self-indulgent hippy bollocks). Some things that will be considered normal (perhaps gender fluidity for example) in a decade or so tend to crop up in places like these.

Lots of 'interesting' highly destructive ideas, precisely because they're self-indulgent hippy bollocks. That's the cause; 'Me-ism'.

[plodder]

You can't put the cat back in the bag. People have had a tiny taste of freedom and they're going to want more.

This is nothing to do with the factors that lead to "success", or the reasons we have a stratified society, and is more like a grumble from someone who feels disorientated by modernity.