My Dream City: No Public Schools

[vnatale]

2) How do such un-democratic societies [Russia and China] motivate their students to be such better students compared to those of the United States?

Discipline.

When I was in college, many (perhaps even most) of the highest-achieving students in my engineering classes were Asian. Some of them made it quite clear that they weren't really interested in engineering. They were more interested in less lucrative subjects, but their families expected them to be engineers, so that's what they were majoring in. And their families expected them to be the best, so they studied their asses off to earn good grades.

Discipline in American culture seems to be sorely lacking.

You reminded me of a news story that came out of Texas in the early 90's, Corpus Christi I think. The top ten students in a handful of high schools in the district were all or mostly Vietnamese. It was overwhelming how much they dominated the test scores and GPA averages. Well someone went there to do a deeper dive and came away with an interesting conclusion. Basically all these kids were the children of Vietnamese war refugees from South Vietnam (boat people they were called). The attitude among these families was that the access to education they found in the US was a brass ring of opportunity whereas the other kids just took it for granted. In the end, the conclusion was that the Vietnamese weren't any smarter than the other kids, it was just that they had a different attitude which allowed them to excel.

Now that I think about it, similar conclusions were made about the reasons for the Vietnamese defeat of the US in the war despite being outmatched in resources.

I taught some college courses on programming in Dallas when I first got down here, around 1997.
In one of my classes, there were about 70 students.
About 40 of them were Vietnamese.
I couldn't understand their English at all, but I guess they understood mine.
Why do I say that? Because they all got A's.

(Some of the other students did well too, but there were some really lazy ones, all of whom were native-born Americans as far as I could tell.)

For two of my Advanced Accounting classes as an undergraduate I had a woman from Taiwan who sat next to me who was not totally fluent in English. Later on I bought her tax class book from her. She'd written in the entire book to translate it to Taiwanese (if that is the language)! That was incredible drive to not only take on taxes but take it essentially in a foreign language.

Vinny

[Tortoise]

That go to first unread post feature failed again. I only saw your answer today when someone else responded to it.

I agree with all you have to say above. However, how does that address those students in the theoretically inferior un-democratic countries outperforming us? How does their inferior political system lead to having more disciplined students in country than our "superlative" democratic system with its personal liberties and all else we lord over the non-democratic countries?

I think it’s more due to cultural differences than political differences.

[vnatale]

That go to first unread post feature failed again. I only saw your answer today when someone else responded to it.

I agree with all you have to say above. However, how does that address those students in the theoretically inferior un-democratic countries outperforming us? How does their inferior political system lead to having more disciplined students in country than our "superlative" democratic system with its personal liberties and all else we lord over the non-democratic countries?

I think it’s more due to cultural differences than political differences.

But do we or do we not view those countries as being oppressive societies? If so, how is there such great achievement under such oppression? Is it just the innate competitive spirit and innate desire to achieve that is common to all human nature no matter what conditions you live under?

Vinny

[Tortoise]

I think it’s more due to cultural differences than political differences.

But do we or do we not view those countries as being oppressive societies? If so, how is there such great achievement under such oppression? Is it just the innate competitive spirit and innate desire to achieve that is common to all human nature no matter what conditions you live under?

My post mentioned Asians. Not all Asian societies are oppressive. China is, but Taiwan and South Korea aren’t, for example. But the average student from all of those Asian countries can kick the average American student’s ass in STEM subjects.

Again, I think it’s largely because of the culture of discipline that’s prevalent in Asian societies — whether oppressive or not.

[vnatale]

I think it’s more due to cultural differences than political differences.

But do we or do we not view those countries as being oppressive societies? If so, how is there such great achievement under such oppression? Is it just the innate competitive spirit and innate desire to achieve that is common to all human nature no matter what conditions you live under?

My post mentioned Asians. Not all Asian societies are oppressive. China is, but Taiwan and South Korea aren’t, for example. But the average student from all of those Asian countries can kick the average American student’s ass in STEM subjects.

Again, I think it’s largely because of the culture of discipline that’s prevalent in Asian societies — whether oppressive or not.

Yes, however, my initial question was how students in un-democratic, oppressive societies, e.g., China and Russian and why not throw in Iran now (possibly) outachieve our students.

You've answered the China question. What about Russia and, possibly, Iran if that is the case.

If you, with your innate intelligence that you have, had, instead, been brought up in Russia do you think you would have achieved more, the same, or less than you've been able to achieve as an American?

I think the propaganda we've always been given is that because we are this Democratic, free society then all our outcomes are going to be better. Until you look at how our students rank compared to other students in the world. And, particularly jarring when you see how they rank compared to our same propaganda telling us that nothing good can come out of certain countries.

Vinny

[vnatale]

First, I’d say America is not a democracy but is a constitutional republic.

And I’d also not a “free” country would not necessarily do better than a state-planned autocracy on any individual metric.

For example, a country with centralized planning could administer IQ tests to children at age 5, and murder or sell into international sex trafficking the 90% of children with the lowest IQs. This country would have the smartest and best students in the world.

Centralized planning isn’t bad and can be enormously beneficial for any individual element/goal like student intelligence/scores. It that comes at a massive cost to other elements of society.

I’d argue the free society is the one I’d want to live in, and in aggregate would likely do better if a rubric were created to look at multiple elements of society, not just limited ones. The rubric would be subjective by nature, so tough to do.

I break it down quite simply into, given the choice between dangerous freedom and safe lack of freedom, I’ll take the freedom every time. We can stop all gun-related deaths if we were willing to confiscate all guns and kill anyone who refused to turn them in. There won’t me much of a country left after, since at least a few percent of gun owners would rebel against the gun-confiscators.

So yeah, we could do it, get rid of all gun crime, eventually, once we genocided 80% of the country to include those who fought against the gun confiscation, those who died serving as the confiscators, and innocents caught in the crossfire. We’d have a desolate wasteland left over, but if the only goal is to reduce gun violence, sure, we could do it if we stopped everything else, disabled the internet, cut off all forms of communication, allocated all of our government budget to confiscating guns to include hiring foreign mercenaries. But I’d argue the cost here would be similar to the hypothetical country who murders or sells their stupid children into sex trafficking. Sure, you’ll have a gun-free country, but will it actually be the planned utopia?

I guess I’m the crazy guy who turns every conversation into the second amendment now, but the problem is liberals ignore the costs of what they want to do, whether it be good schools or a gun-free world. And they’re building their rocket ship to the moon and ignoring the fact gravity exists.

If we just put more money into schools, they’ll be better. If we just ban guns, people will peacefully turn them in. But ultimately gravity knocks them down on their ass, and they wind up blaming conservatives or big corporations.

Regarding your "First" (what was the "second"?)....I heard this morning that we are a "representative republic". Would you agree with that description? Supplementary to your description of a "constitutional republic"?

But I was using "democracy" in the sense of how Obama's predecessor, in which he thought the solution to the world's problems were for all countries to become democratic (which is actually quite dangerous for certain countries if the populace if not yet prepared to take on this responsibility). In general, I think that "democracy" signifies the popular having a say in who gets to make the laws and who gets to run their governments.

What you say makes sense in terms of central planning maintaining a focus at the expense of the overall popular welfare. I'm going to need to do more searching myself as to how student scores are measured in other countries and how inclusive or exclusive they are of the general populace.

And, yes, the freedom we have does have its downsides. Even things like our court system where you are innocent until proven guilty can result in more guilty not being found guilty.

I do find your gun example, though, rather extreme. How does what you lay out jibe with what went on in the country of Australia?

Not sure where you get your closing argument about putting more money into schools. I'm of the opinion that schools get plenty enough (too much?). My original question was how these oppressive societies are able to product better students than us.

Vinny

[vnatale]

But I was using "democracy" in the sense of how Obama's predecessor, in which he thought the solution to the world's problems were for all countries to become democratic (which is actually quite dangerous for certain countries if the populace if not yet prepared to take on this responsibility).

...

I do find your gun example, though, rather extreme. How does what you lay out jibe with what went on in the country of Australia?

Vinny

Much like you say some countries aren’t ready for the responsibility of democratic-style voting, you understand that the culture of different countries is different.

If you tried to ban semi-automatic firearms in the US, it’s my belief it would lead to whatever a modern-day revolutionary war would look like. America is not Australia or England. Culturally, many Americans would rather die than hand over their guns.

There’s a line in the sand and that’s it. I’ve had multiple conversations with gun owners who don’t know each other and didn’t know what response I was looking for, and all of them made comments about willingness to die over their 2A rights because they know once that’s gone, the rest of the rights will follow down the drain.

Regarding Australia, they’ve had some of the worlds toughest lockdowns for covid. I think there’s at least causative link between an unarmed populace and draconian covid lockdowns. Government know what happened to the Michigan governor could happen to them and they are careful not to overstep too much. But once you take away everyone’s guns, it’s anything goes.

An EMT once told me that my town has the highest rate of gun ownership in the state. Surprised me. Maybe I should start asking my neighbors if they do own a gun. Do I own one since I own an old Daisy BB rifle? I had to get an FID card from the police so as to be able to buy this (about 40 years ago).

I think taking away all guns is a straw man argument. Can you name any politicians or political parties who have advocated for this? Therefore, the probabilities / possibilities seem extremely, extremely slim of this ever happening. I think there has been a call for more reasonable control of guns, such as background checks prior to selling a gun.

As I said my town has the highest rate of gun ownership in this state of Massachusetts. But Massachusetts has some of the strictest rules regarding gun ownership. I believe that has been a direct factor in there being no mass gun murders in this state. Something that cannot be said in other states with much less strict rules regarding gun ownership.

Here I see that Massachusetts is 40th in the country in registered guns: https://www.thoughtco.com/gun-owners-pe ... ns-3325153

Here I see that Massachusetts is 15th in the country in population (which greatly surprises as I'd always thought Massachusetts was a smaller state in terms of population): https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us- ... ation.html

A quick analysis of just those two facts above seems to obviously state that Massachusetts must be one of the lowest states of per capita ownership of registered guns.

Other than what I read in this forum, guns are just not a daily concern for me. There are few, few murders in a large radius of territory around me and, therefore, few murders by gun.

Just came across this...https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/gu ... uxbndlbing.

I live 45 minutes, about 40 miles from Springfield.

Vinny

[vnatale]

I think taking away all guns is a straw man argument. Can you name any politicians or political parties who have advocated for this? Therefore, the probabilities / possibilities seem extremely, extremely slim of this ever happening. I think there has been a call for more reasonable control of guns, such as background checks prior to selling a gun.

...

As I said my town has the highest rate of gun ownership in this state of Massachusetts. But Massachusetts has some of the strictest rules regarding gun ownership. I believe that has been a direct factor in there being no mass gun murders in this state. Something that cannot be said in other states with much less strict rules regarding gun ownership.

Politicians can say anything they want, but they want to ban all semi-automatic guns of all kinds. If you look at the definition of assault weapon, all semi-automatic guns apply.

As far as the mass gun murders thing, I find that a ridiculous metric. Since 1 in 4 Americans will be the victim of a violent crime in their lifetime. And 1 in a million will be the victim of a mass gun murder.

The FBI UCR shows 0.4% of Americans were the victim of a violent crime in 2019, extrapolated out over a lifetime, that’s about 1 in 4 Americans.

Guns carried responsibly help prevent and stop violent crime.

How many people are killed my mass shootings each year? Even the “best” mass shooter has killed a couple dozen people. And how many mass shootings are there per year? 5 to 10? If that?

Now, if you look up mass shooting stats, they’re much higher because a mass shooting can be defined as 2 or more people killed in a single incident, which describes a lot of gang violence, a lot of police shootings, and armed robberies.

But if we’re talking actual real mass gun shootings, it’s probably well under a few hundred deaths each year. Compared to violent crime which is 1.2 Million victims.

Do you agree with the following?

"Definition In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force."

I have never carried a weapon of any kind on me. According to that definition I have not yet been a victim of violent crime. I have several times suffered from robbery but I was never present so those did not involve force or threat of force.

And, it seems by your definition if someone is 40 years old then for your stating: "extrapolated out over a lifetime, that’s about 1 in 4 Americans."....that that 40 year old has lived about 1/2 a lifetime?

I think our average (whether it be mean or median) age here is about 40 years old? We did a poll on it several months ago.

I'm going to do a poll now doing that violent crime definition above and asking several violent crime / gun ownership questions.

Vinny

[vnatale]

Do you agree with the following?

"Definition In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force."

I have never carried a weapon of any kind on me. According to that definition I have not yet been a victim of violent crime. I have several times suffered from robbery but I was never present so those did not involve force or threat of force.

And, it seems by your definition if someone is 40 years old then for your stating: "extrapolated out over a lifetime, that’s about 1 in 4 Americans."....that that 40 year old has lived about 1/2 a lifetime?

I think our average (whether it be mean or median) age here is about 40 years old? We did a poll on it several months ago.

I'm going to do a poll now doing that violent crime definition above and asking several violent crime / gun ownership questions.

Vinny

Perhaps I should have phrased it as 1 in 4 Americans will be the victim of a violent crime during their lives.

You were never the victim of a robbery if you weren’t present. You were the victim of a burglary. They are different crimes and burglary is not included in this stat.

Also, if we do a poll here of our small number of members, it doesn’t mean much. Too small of a sample size, and we’re not at the ends of our lives. I’m not sure if the purpose is to attempt to challenge or discredit the FBI?

Your re-phrasing reads to me exactly as your first effort. Or, at least I interpret it the same.

Yes, it would not be statistically valid but it would provide some interesting anecdotal evidence. But if violent crimes are equally possible to occur to one at any point of one's life, you could consider the 40 year old to have lived about half a life. Therefore if you polled X of them, you'd have information for X * 1/2 total lives.

Not at all challenging the FBI. More questioning your extrapolation of their information.

Vinny

[vnatale]

But if violent crimes are equally possible to occur to one at any point of one's life, you could consider the 40 year old to have lived about half a life. Therefore if you polled X of them, you'd have information for X * 1/2 total lives.

I’d assume violent crimes significantly skewed to the second half of life, relative to the first half.

More likely to smash a 70 year olds head in with a brick than a 7 month old.
More likely to hold a 70 year old at gun point or robbery compared to a 7 month old.
More likely to murder a 70 year old than a 7 month old.

Rape, I’d assume might skew more towards the first half of life, but rape is a smaller percentage of violent crimes than the other three, by far.

Yes. That all makes sense.

Vinny

[vnatale]

As you can see, back in years of yore, there actually used to be these creatures known as "liberal" Republicans (Theodore Roosevelt was actually one of them).

The brief differences described here between a liberal and conservative Republican seem to read like much of what I read in this (and other) topic....

Vinny

The conservatives were led by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. Taft was a Cincinnati lawyer and Washington royalty—the son of the twenty-seventh president, William Howard Taft. The younger Taft had come of age in the White House. He was the product of the best schools in the nation, a Harvard Law man who had cemented himself at the center of the conservative coalition on Capitol Hill. Taft was a fighter and enormously respected. “For many voters, especially independents,” according to Brownell, “ ‘Republican’ and ‘Taft’ were synonymous.”

As a liberal Republican, Dewey supported the Marshall Plan and internationalist foreign policy. Taft threatened to create an “Anti-Marshall Plan Committee,” arguing in a 1947 speech, “The solution of many of the European problems must rest with their own governments . . . Why should we make ourselves responsible for something entirely beyond our control?”

Dewey also supported Truman’s Universal Military Training plan. Taft loathed the idea—too much government.

As governor of New York, Dewey had a proven record of spending on social programs. Those who mocked the idea of a “welfare state” were “very clumsy Republicans,” Dewey said. “There has never been a responsible government which did not have the welfare of its people at heart,” he had said. “Anybody who thinks that an attack on the fundamental idea of security and welfare is appealing to people generally is living in the Middle Ages.” Taft fought for less federal spending at almost every turn, and blamed the current inflation crisis on High Tax Harry’s spending.

The only major policies that both Dewey and Taft consistently supported were civil rights and desegregation, and a homeland for the Jews. In other words, Dewey agreed with Truman on many of the major issues.

Taft launched his campaign early, announcing his run at a press conference on October 24, 1947, in Columbus, Ohio. He was fifty-eight years old. Taft offered a short list of the issues that would be front and center in the 1948 election, and number one on his list echoed the conservative ideology of his father: “The general issue [is] between people who want more federal power and action and the people who want less.” Taft, of course, wanted less.

“There will be violent differences of opinion,” he warned of the months ahead.