[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by guihong

I think I must be several rungs lower in knowledge and brain power, but I see several problems right off the bat:

1. The minute you set up the neediest classes to benefit the most from inequalities, you no longer have a fair society. In fact, the upper classes (if you will) are being discriminated against. You will never have "fair". You can have "equal opportunity".

Yes, the upper-class IS being discriminated against but, again, the idea here is that if there is going to be inequality, if we're going to have a thumb on the scale (and as humans we can hardly do anything BUT) then Rawls' idea is that the inequality goes in favor of those *least* advantaged. At present the thumb on the scale clearly favors the *most* advantaged. Since someone is going to end up slightly ahead no matter what we do, we have to decide who we want to favor. Rawls says favor those for whom a bit of inequality in their favor will do the most good--that means those who have the least.

2. I don't agree that poor=lower standards for Berkeley or any college. If UCB demands a 4.0 and 2200, so be it. It's the same as the draft example, in my opinion, but based on class, not payoffs, and the other way around in that poor turns into an advantage.

The reason I use GPA and SAT is because there are all manner of little advantages that the upper-middle class child of a pair of college professors is going to have that the working-class child will not. Some of those advantages, things like private SAT prep, a family library, etc. can translate to unearned advantage. So IF there are two candidates, let's say Lynn and Jacqueline both have 3.75 GPA and 1600 SAT scores then Lynn should get in if Lynn is from an impoverished background and Jacqueline is not. Now, if Jacqueline has a 4.0 and a 2200 then she should get in, period as should Lynn. But all things being equal, again, put the thumb on the scale of the person who is least advantaged because, as a whole, we will get the most bang for the buck.

I would be mad as hell if I were Lynn, because the standards were lower. I'd never know if I could have met them on my own merit. Instead, I got in solely on the "benefit" of my class. Also, I (as Lynn) would presumably have had more to learn and had to work harder because my family would not be college educated. I would feel that all that work was for naught because of some factor out of my control. So I don't believe in affirmative action based on class, and I would not take it for myself even if I was eligible under this (hypothetical) society. It's patronizing.

I understand the argument you are making. I even share some of your stance on it. But IF we're going to have affirmative action, I think it should be class based not race based.

3. I can agree on financial assistance for school, but if I were queen of education, I'd trash the federal loan and grant programs and privatize all student aid. That would cut down the artificially high cost of education and re-introduce competition: bang for the buck, so to speak. But that's another post.

I'm a little dubious. I understand that in certain circumstances markets are better allocators but I don't know that student loans are one of those things for much the same reason I don't think that markets are the best allocators of health care. I see no real benefit for, say, Chase to provide student loans at a reasonable rate to poor people. I also don't want people's ability to get a loan be subject to a credit check even one based upon their parents. I would actually prefer we do student loans in a quid pro quo basis. If you have the cash to pay out of pocket, good on you. If you take out a loan with BofA to pay for school, bully for you. If, however, you can do neither then the deal I'd like to see society make is this: one year of work for one year of school. So let's say you want to be a doctor. That's eight years of school. We'll foot the bill. We'll pay for your books, etc. When you graduate you spend the next eight years in practice in either a rural community that needs a doctor or an inner-city clinic that needs one. Now, probably better than half of those people will be heading for the city the minute their 8 years are up but there will be others who will rather like being where they are. Either way, it is win-win-win. Communities get eager young doctors and, thus, local health care. Students who otherwise couldn't afford medical school get their dream. Society doesn't have a bunch of doctors getting out of school saddled with $200K in debt.

4. Again, if I were the queen of education, the only way to gain equality of education and resources would be to abolish federal government involvement in education altogether. All schools are private businesses with x dollars per student-no exeptions. Those that fail to deliver a quality product (i.e. literate adults able to attend college or get a job), fail. Thanks to the teachers union, it is will nigh impossible to weed out bad ones, so that's (the union) gone under my plan. It's been shown to work in some of the worst neighborhoods in this country.

I have to say I strenuously disagree with getting the federal government out of education for one simple reason: national standards. I think it is utterly *insane* that a nation as technologically and scientifically advanced as America does not have a standard for what students should learn. We are the only industrialized nation that does not have a national standard that we expect every student to have attained by the time they graduate. So if California wants to set Algebra, biology, American history and Civics as criteria and Arkansas wants to drop biology and algebra under the present system that is fine. I think that is madness. There are reasons why the United States, alone of the G-8 nations, and the only OTHER nation in NATO, where knowledge of the basic principles of evolution are not well understood (the other being Turkey). There are reasons why American students under perform in math and science generally. It's because we have no national standard so if you are in a school district in Arkansas the teacher may--either to protect her job or because she believes it--not teach evolution in biology class while if you are in Maine, you're probably going to learn the amount of evolutionary biology one would need in order to understand why various bacterial pathogens have evolved drug resistance.

Some regulation will be necessary, but I believe that we're in this mess because of rampant regulations and interference by government. We need much less, not more.

I'm unconvinced that we need less regulation. To me the anti-regulation idea is like, well, like this (admittedly, I'm taking this out of the educational context and putting it in a financial one). Imagine, if you will, that you are given a driver's license that allows you to drive drunk. If you get into an accident you won't be prosecuted. Even if you kill someone you won't be prosecuted. What's more, if you wrap your Porsche around someone's Kia and kill everyone in the Kia, you will have provided for you, free of charge, a brand new Porsche. Now, what possible reason do you have NOT to drive drunk other than the possibility that you, yourself, might be killed? Very little that I can see. This is the situation I see us in with regulation of the finance sector. If I work for a big investment bank and I make all the right moves and the company has a banner year, I make my salary and a bonus. If I make all the wrong moves and, in so doing, cause a pension fund to collapse and wipe out some company that was viable because I bought it, hollowed it out and then sold it at fire sale prices, I get my salary and my bonus. So heads I win, tails you lose. At that point, other than the sheer competitive joy of being the top dog, what *possible* reason do I have to care about my job performance? None. I'm getting paid and paid well whether my actions spread prosperity far and wide or concentrates it all within my little firm. Even if I do something that crosses the line into illegality there's a better than even chance I'm going to walk, with my salary and bonus. That is *all* a direct result of deregulation.

Cheers
Aj