COVID19 Factors We Should Consider/Current Events

[David Roberts]

I would legitimately like to know more about this. I've yet to figure out what my HOA does except charge me money each year and plant cheap flowers on the sidewalk.

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Eric, regarding your HOA expenditures you should have access to the annual line item budget. It's required to be provided to property owners.

I live in Arizona where municipalities have historically ceded local control of community infrastructure to HOAs so that the municipality does not have to construct the roads, street lights, sidewalks, community monuments and security gates, etc. As private property that infrastructure is the responsibility of the HOA. Further, state law requires HOAs to reserve funds over the life of the infrastructure assets to cover the cost of repair and replacement. This portion of the HOA fee is really a tax collected, maintained, and administered by the HOA for the benefit of the community. These reserve costs should normally be the largest share of the HOA fee.

Operating expenses will primarily include landscaping maintenance, maintenance of any community pools or buildings, administrative costs and of course the community manager.

My opinion is that HOAs are the most grass roots level of self government. Other members of this forum may see it as localized tyranny. If you have good intent, join your HOA Board and do some good for your community and neighbors. Crowd the bad people out. And yes, it can be hard!

[David Roberts]

As one of the responders let me assure you and the audience that I am not triggered nor upset nor do I feel attacked. I kind of thought this was the sort of place where we're all adult enough to handle some argument.




Please elaborate.

Good. I misread you tone.

[David Roberts]

As one of the responders let me assure you and the audience that I am not triggered nor upset nor do I feel attacked. I kind of thought this was the sort of place where we're all adult enough to handle some argument. If this isn't a topic people want to discuss that's fine, but let's not characterize a discussion as triggering as a way to avoid it. Feel free to respond as you please. You presented your thoughts and I responded to them as someone who had to ask myself that very question. My answer to myself was the same question I posed to you- Why do they deserve to lose the best education for them while I pursue my dream of changing the system? My answer was that they didn't. That if I wanted to change the system that was something I needed to do on my own time rather than sacrifice their education to that ideal. I think it's silly to present it as an either/or situation. Long term, after studying the situation closely here, I decided that the real changes were not possible at the local level. I'm not sure real changes will be able to start anywhere other than the teachers' colleges and possibly the admin who are getting the kickbacks for buying the suckiest curriculum possible. But I do know that I was not prepared for the amount of grift in that snake pit. The same question has arose with almost any decision. Does one leave where one lives for greener pastures or does one try to change local government? I think people have to do what's right for them. What can the person handle? Are they genuinely outnumbered?



Please elaborate.

As a parent you are responsible for the education of your children. If home schooling is a good option for you then that is wonderful. Your decision to take on or ignore the societal or educational problems that you see is also entirely your decision. But if you don't who will? Probably the same people that caused the problem in the first place. Local problems can be solved at the local level. None of us should be waiting for the man on the white horse to come riding into town to fix things from the top down.

If you do not engage problems in the physical world, a million forum posts in the digital world are not going to change a thing.

[Eric Schexnayder]

Lazy and greedy are only antithetical in the context of an individual who believes in earning what they want.

I was indirectly responding to anticausal's post, which stated that most parents would rather have dual income instead of properly educated children. I think my claim is appropriate in that context.

First off, let me clarify that I acknowledge that public schooling is the best available option for many people. That said, the way that a dual income has become the baseline has been an insidious harm for this country. It puts many households into situations where they cannot function well, or at all, without either two incomes or one income + subsidies of some sort. This is not exactly contributing to human flourishing.

I'll reciprocate and acknowledge that for some people, homeschooling may in fact be the best option, and I don't mean to sound like I'm condemning it in any way. I attended private school all the way through high school because the local public schools were "unsafe" (a claim from my parents that, I must admit, I never substantiated on my own). Not everyone has access to good or even adequate public education, and what parents deem best for educating their children should be an individual choice subject to a free market.

I do agree that dual income is becoming a baseline for society, but I disagree that this is necessarily a bad thing. I personally accept it as the natural consequence of a growing capitalistic economy. I'll concede that this can happen too quickly and create financial strain for individual households. But let's be real: two people start working and approximately double their household income. Unless the additional income is taken out in hard cash and kept under a mattress, that money will be spent, and that spent money grows the economy. The growth of the economy stimulates inflation, and so it's not unrealistic to expect dual incomes to be a natural result of our economic system.

Eric, do you realize that this reduces productive contribution to society solely to being an individual member of the workforce? Was that your intention?

Yes, I do / Yes, it was, and let me be clear that I don't mean this pejoratively. I consider someone who has an income generating job or who has amassed wealth to be a productive member of society. Basically someone who can pay his or her own way in the world. I feel this is a pretty objective definition since that specific person's individual productive value can be measured in units of dollars.

That is not to say that a homeschooling adult or whatever other example you respond with cannot be a good, law-abiding citizen who can have an indirect positive impact on society. But to me they are, by definition, not productive.

But what are classrooms socializing the children for?

I don't understand what's unclear here. Do you disagree that children require socialization?

The large-scale classroom environment is extremely artificial, and a very new thing in human history. Where else in life are you thrown more or less randomly together with people based on birthdays and perhaps arbitrary geographical guidelines (but not small enough to be a meaningful neighborhood), to engage in activities that require a high degree of enforced uniformity, regardless of personal choice, individual aptitude, etc?

Personally, the more a workplace, training class, or any other environment reminds me of the various public schools I attended, the less adult it is, and the less I like it.

I'm reading this as a tortuous attempt at an appeal to nature fallacy. Barbell training is also extremely artificial and relatively modern, and I think we probably agree it's still a good thing. Maybe I'm misreading your meaning here.

Furthermore, a classroom teacher is unfairly expected to take these groups and maintain order, with a paucity of time and exposure to know the kids as individuals. Any aspect in which a student falls more than one standard deviation outside the norm becomes a problem, one way or another. Coping strategies are needed, primarily to get by in the artificial construct of the classroom - either (in the best cases) to enable learning subject matter and skills, or (in worse cases) simply to maintain order and get through the day. It would work better to have very small student-teacher ratios, with instructors who very well know and are heavily involved with the students as human beings, and can thus tailor the instruction to the individuals.

Turns out, we have a structure that can do exactly that. It's called a family.

What is "unfair" about it when the teacher is being paid? And I think your implied assumption that all families have members that can or want to enact that structure is a bit naive.

I do agree that smaller student-teacher are better, but I don't think we agree on the environment.

I get what you're saying, though it's not free money when it's your own that's just not being taken from you... More to the point, the reason that a homeschooling credit wouldn't be given to childless households, but would be given to the homeschooling ones isn't because it's a refund for not using the public education. It's because the homeschooler is saving the state the money it would have been spending on the education of those particular children.

I'm not against the idea of public education - not everyone can (or should) homeschool. I do want it to be effective and to "first do no harm", however.

I get that semantically that money is not "free", but I think my point stands. It's essentially additional disposable income, and I'd be hard pressed to believe that there aren't parents out there who wouldn't take advantage of such an opportunity. As much as I typically dislike state-mandated interventions and taxes, I think compulsory education is important, and I think that public schools should rarely, if ever, be defunded in any way (excluding various types of corruption, obviously).

Again, this ignores the "both/and" crowd. One of our factors for leaving public school was specifically that teachers did not need to spend extra time teaching our boys, say, mathematics, so them being there was taking resources from those who did need their attention. This was right alongside the understanding that some of the teachers were using curricula that fail to teach math anyway... There's room for multiple factors. Our civic involvement can try to make things better for public school kids while protecting the ones we can from the problems - in fact, those kids may just grow up to be civic-minded and responsible people who can continue to exert positive influence on this world...at least if we have anything to say about it.

And I think that this ignores reality. Exactly how big do you think this crowd of parents who are both homeschooling their own children and working to reform and maintain the local public school system is?

So you're looking around at the kids graduating and you're ok with the quality of their education? Because from what I've seen helping the children of friends and what I saw in the community college classes and even university classes I took these young folk are so not prepared. I mean not prepared for basics like a simple 500 word essay in response to a question. They are utterly spoon-fed at the freshmen level and sometimes beyond depending on the class. Grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, how to take notes, I've helped and seen enough to worry me.

That's a very leading, and I think intentionally mischaracterizing question.

I think what you're describing can be attributed to a few different things, one of which is parental reinforcement of education, discipline, and respect as values. Where are these kids' parents in making sure that school is a priority and that they learn to do these things correctly? To me, that is a much bigger cause of why public schools struggle than just the credentials of the average teacher.

The bell curve of intelligence and work capacity also come in to play here.

Please elaborate.

I think parents should model going to work as the means of maintaining and improving the quality of life for their family. In addition, they should reinforce that their ability to do that work came from making education a priority as children. I don't see homeschooling as conducive to this model since it necessitates one parent staying home.

I also think the first goal of education should be to equip the entire population with basic problem-solving skills for the purposes of working and relative self-sufficiency. Education for enlightenment alone after that should definitely be encouraged but is not for everyone, and I think that the most successful people in the world are those who pursue that edification on their own. My personal experience with homeschooling parents has been that they more-or-less conflate these two things and over-emphasize the importance of the latter at a young age (and I got the impression from the article that Rip posted as well. I mean who really cares that your kid knows about chin-up anatomy? After all, nobody that I know cares that I do). So I find the apparent disconnect between all these things ironic if not hypocritical.

I'll spell it out a different way. Instead of insisting on teaching your kid math a specific way, go be an engineer, accountant, or any other career that requires a thorough understanding of mathematics and inspire them to want to learn it correctly on their own.

[David Roberts]

David:

I am curious how long ago your effectiveness with the school board was, and in what type of environment.

Is this important because you have the mistaken belief that things were easier for your parents and grandparents? Different yes, easier absolutely not! Current problems seem harder because it is your turn to deal with them.

[Mark Rippetoe]

From a friend:

As the English historian Macaulay put it in a letter to Henry S. Randall, author of the 1858 Life of Thomas Jefferson,

“The day will come when in the State of New York a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a Legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a Legislature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink Champagne and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man who hears his children cry for more bread?”

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THIS JUST IN: COVID Vaccines Damage ALL Hearts, Study Finds

[Subby]

I'd like to thank David and Eric for removing the last lingering shreds of doubt I have about home educating my children. Aside, I think it's important to call it home education not home schooling. (This is a point my local home education network makes) because home schooling implies you are just replicating school at home. There are other, better methods of education than school.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Here is the full text of the above excerpt. Something to think carefully about in these final days:


Full Text of Macaulay’s Letter to Henry S. Randall

“You are surprised to learn that I have not a high opinion of Mr. Jefferson, and I am surprised at your surprise. I am certain that I never wrote a line, and that I never, in Parliament, in conversation, or even on the hustings—a place where it is the fashion to court the populace—uttered a word indicating an opinion that the supreme authority in a state ought to be entrusted to the majority of citizens told by the head; in other words, to the poorest and most ignorant part of society. I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

In Europe, where the population is dense, the effect of such institutions would be almost instantaneous. What happened lately in France is an example. In 1848 a pure democracy was established there. During a short time there was reason to expect a general spoliation, a national bankruptcy, a new partition of the soil, a maximum of prices, a ruinous load of taxation laid on the rich for the purpose of supporting the poor in idleness. Such a system would, in twenty years, have made France as poor and barbarous as the France of the Carlovingians. Happily, the danger was averted; and now there is a despotism, a silent tribune, an enslaved press. Liberty is gone, but civilization has been saved.

I have not the smallest doubt that if we had a purely democratic government here the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilization would perish; or order and prosperity would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish. You may think that your country enjoys an exemption from these evils. I will frankly own to you that I am of a very different opinion. Your fate I believe to be certain, though it is deferred by a physical cause. As long as you have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the Old World, and, while that is the case, the Jefferson politics may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity.

But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be as low, and will fluctuate as much with you as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented, and inclines him to listen with eagerness to agitators who tell him that it is a monstrous iniquity that one man should have a million, while another can not get a full meal. In bad years there is plenty of grumbling here, and sometimes a little rioting. But it matters little. For here the sufferers are not the rulers. The supreme power is in the hands of a class, numerous indeed, but select; of an educated class; of a class which is, and knows itself to be, deeply interested in the security of property and the maintenance of order. Accordingly, the malcontents are firmly yet gently restrained. The bad time is got over without robbing the wealthy to relieve the indigent. The springs of national prosperity soon begin to flow again: work is plentiful, wages rise, and all is tranquility and cheerfulness. I have seen England pass three or four times through such critical seasons as I have described.

Through such seasons the United States will have to pass in the course of the next century, if not of this. How will you pass through them? I heartily wish you a good deliverance. But my reason and my wishes are at war, and I cannot help foreboding the worst. It is quite plain that your Government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the Government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.

The day will come when in the State of New York a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner, will choose a Legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a Legislature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink Champagne and to ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the two candidates is likely to be preferred by a working-man who hears his children cry for more bread? I seriously apprehend that you will, in some such season of adversity as I have described, do things which will prevent prosperity from returning; that you will act like people who should in a year of scarcity devour all the seed-corn, and thus make the next a year not of scarcity, but of absolute famine.

There will be, I fear, spoliation. The spoliation will increase the distress. The distress will produce fresh spoliation. There is nothing to stop you. Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor. As I said before, when a society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Cæsar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth; with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions. Thinking thus, of course I cannot reckon Jefferson among the benefactors of mankind. I readily admit that his intentions were good, and his abilities considerable. Odious stories have been circulated about his private life; but I do not know on what evidence those stories rest, and I think it probable that they are false, or monstrously exaggerated. I have no doubt that I shall derive both pleasure and information from your account of him. I have the honor to be, dear sir, your faithful servant, T. B. Macaulay.

[Mark Rippetoe]

This is simply bizarre: Nobel Prize in medicine 2023 awarded to Katalin Kariko, Drew Weissman for pioneering mRNA vaccine to fight COVID-19

Absolutely none of these people can be trusted about anything. I wonder how long it's really been this way.

[David Roberts]

I'd like to thank David and Eric for removing the last lingering shreds of doubt I have about home educating my children. Aside, I think it's important to call it home education not home schooling. (This is a point my local home education network makes) because home schooling implies you are just replicating school at home. There are other, better methods of education than school.

Subby, Congratulations and good luck. I was not expecting my comments on this forum to have such a profound and life changing impact on the children of other forum participants. I know you and your children will enjoy an excellent learning experience. I have no idea the ages of your children, but please keep us advised as you proceed on this journey. I can't speak for Eric but if this all works out as you plan I do not expect any credit for your decision. If it fails I will readily accept the blame and apologize.

By the way i learned a lot of life lessons outside of school too.