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[pisskop]

What if we reduced the minimum age for schooling to say 3 or 4 and ended it earlier while encouraging technical schools for the majority of population?  The higher scorers should be encouraged to take traditionally challenging paths... and demand would help dictate who goes where to educate for high school and up.

(since we are off topic somewhat)

[SalmonGod]

What if we reduced the minimum age for schooling to say 3 or 4 and ended it earlier while encouraging technical schools for the majority of population?  The higher scorers should be encouraged to take traditionally challenging paths... and demand would help dictate who goes where to educate for high school and up.

(since we are off topic somewhat)

Scores are a bad indicator of potential, in my opinion.  The school system is incredibly de-motivating to certain types of people.  I was one of them.  Did horribly in public school, but flourished in college.  Public school teachers considered me a problem, but professors loved me.  My grades were all over the place in public school, and I only got accepted into college based on my SAT, where I scored very highly (in the country's top 1% IIRC).  So... one score was an alright indicator, I suppose.

[ed boy]

 It was said in the first reply, and lots of people seem to be assigning private schools as the source of all evil, but there is only one way to achieve equality.

You'd have to take everyone's child away at birth and raise them ia commune, where the opportunities are all equal.  All new babies would need to be anonymized to prevent rich people from finding out who their children are. 

To consider the issue of schooling, let's suppose that we do eliminate private schools, and make public school attendance mandatory. There would still be some public schools that are a lot better than others, and there would need to be some way of deciding whose children can go to these, and who can't. However attendance is decided, the rich will be more able to jump through the hoops than the poor and have an advantage still.

So suppose we manage to make all schools perfectly identical. Kids only spend eight hours a day there, and the other sixteen they spend with their parents. Private tutors and the like have already been mentioned, but other factors still play an enormous role, from the attitude the parents have on various matters, to the diet and sleep schedules the kids have. All of these are areas where rich parents can have an advantage. The only way to avoid inequality due to parental status is to completely abandon the idea of a family.

If you want to have a completely equal society, you need to ensure that all children are taken from their parents at birth, given completely random names, and never see their parents again. In order to minimize genetic bias, only people of government-approved DNA would be allowed to reproduce. Once children are born, they are taken to one of a number of government-run facilities across the country. Each of those facilities would be identical, and the only people allowed inside would be Tue kids and those running the facilities. A month-by-month curriculum would be decreed, and children would be grouped into classes based on their month of birth. Teachers would rotate to a random new class and location every week, and children would rotate to a new facility (with all peers going to different facilities) every month. Anything less than this is allowing inequality between children to arise.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think you're confusing equality with randomness.

[EnigmaticHat]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 It was said in the first reply, and lots of people seem to be assigning private schools as the source of all evil, but there is only one way to achieve equality.

You'd have to take everyone's child away at birth and raise them ia commune, where the opportunities are all equal.  All new babies would need to be anonymized to prevent rich people from finding out who their children are. 

To consider the issue of schooling, let's suppose that we do eliminate private schools, and make public school attendance mandatory. There would still be some public schools that are a lot better than others, and there would need to be some way of deciding whose children can go to these, and who can't. However attendance is decided, the rich will be more able to jump through the hoops than the poor and have an advantage still.

So suppose we manage to make all schools perfectly identical. Kids only spend eight hours a day there, and the other sixteen they spend with their parents. Private tutors and the like have already been mentioned, but other factors still play an enormous role, from the attitude the parents have on various matters, to the diet and sleep schedules the kids have. All of these are areas where rich parents can have an advantage. The only way to avoid inequality due to parental status is to completely abandon the idea of a family.

If you want to have a completely equal society, you need to ensure that all children are taken from their parents at birth, given completely random names, and never see their parents again. In order to minimize genetic bias, only people of government-approved DNA would be allowed to reproduce. Once children are born, they are taken to one of a number of government-run facilities across the country. Each of those facilities would be identical, and the only people allowed inside would be Tue kids and those running the facilities. A month-by-month curriculum would be decreed, and children would be grouped into classes based on their month of birth. Teachers would rotate to a random new class and location every week, and children would rotate to a new facility (with all peers going to different facilities) every month. Anything less than this is allowing inequality between children to arise.

You're missing the point.  When people say equal, they don't mean clones, and they don't mean perfectly equal.  That's impossible and everyone knows it.  Some people get struck by lightning, some people win the lottery.  Stuff happens.

People who talk about equality generally didn't look at society and say "these people are different, that's bad."  They looked at society and said "these people have different opportunities; and there is no good justification."  So for education, it isn't a problem that kids come out of the system with varying levels of education.  Its a problem that, for example, black kids tend to come out of the system with less education than their white counterparts.  Ditto for poor kids, other racial minority groups, and anyone who lives near a shitty school.  And don't even get me started on kids with learning disabilities, which is fancy speak for "has something that makes them not fit into the school system".  I had (have) incurable terrible handwriting, which was apparently throws the system enough to qualify as a learning disability.  Not to mention have me failing remedial classes, and then shoot up to the highest courses when I was allowed to type or dictate my work.

Um, anyway, the point is that there are serious inequalities that people are fighting against, and that at least some of those battles are worth fighting.

I think you're confusing equality with randomness.

Dammit, I need to learn to be concise in forum posts.  Also, ninja, but I wrote this up so I'm posting it anyway.

[Neonivek]

No the problem isn't even that "Poor kids exit school with less education" either.

It would matter if the reason this happened is one that was "Unfair" so to speak. For example if they simply do not have the time or money to study or go to higher education.

Not to mention have me failing remedial classes, and then shoot up to the highest courses when I was allowed to type or dictate my work.

One thing that stuck with me was a professor outright stating that the reason people cannot write is because schools let them use laptops (and obviously was refering to people like me). Which ticked me off because I only got a laptop near the end of highschool.

Heck I got RSI, a light one but it freeked me out, from having two heavy math courses this year.

[ed boy]

I think you're confusing equality with randomness.

While not trying to be too specific and limit things, how would we *clears throat* "...assure both the children of top earners and bottom dwellers alike start on the same relative line..."?  How could we create a meritocracy and what would the challenges be?

The part about removing children from parents and families is to eliminate parental bias. The Parr about moving children around is to eliminate geographical bias. The part about cycling teachers is to prevent teachers favouring certain kids and resulting bias there. The week by week curriculum is to allow for teacher switching with minimal education disruption. The part about splitting up peer groups is to remove peer pressure bias.

It's about trying to remove all external influences on a child's success in life. If we want to achieve a meritocracy (as the op wanted), then we want to get as many factors of an individual's success to be due to that individual as we can. You can't have equal opportunity if you don't have equal influences on someone's success.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

That doesn't change that your influence removal efforts are still unequal,, just randomly unequal.

You would also fail to achieve a meritocracy by enforcing something like that. You would succeed in achieving only frustration and chaos among the children as you remove everything they could possibly latch onto week after week, leaving them adrift and desperate. They'd probably start trying to kill each other once the effective social isolation went on for long enough, or something else equally undesirable.

It isn't even about whether or not it's a good idea, because we know it isn't, but it fails to achieve even the stated goal.

[ed boy]

That doesn't change that your influence removal efforts are still unequal,, just randomly unequal.

Could you elaborate, please?

You would succeed in achieving only frustration and chaos among the children as you remove everything they could possibly latch onto week after week, leaving them adrift and desperate. They'd probably start trying to kill each other once the effective social isolation went on for long enough, or something else equally undesirable.

I've no doubt that of we were to insert our current kids into such a situation it would be bad for them, but for people born and raised in the system, I imagine they would cope a lot better (but I'm not a psychologist, so I couldn't be certain).

I'm mot saying anything about the educational efficiency of such a system, only that a child's successfulness would be a lot less based on external factors and therefore be more of a meritocracy.

[Criptfeind]

Hey SalmonGod, I dunno if you are still reading this, but I sorta got a question/comment on your proposal. Other then the part you touched upon with it currently being impossible to even think about doing.

In your world you got going. Why would anyone make anything? You gave examples of things like farmers would own the farms they use, and factory workers will own the factories. But. And you even seemed to have a fairly unreasonable expectation that people would just make factories and farms and stuff. But even if that all worked out. Why would they make things? When I really think about it, it makes no sense. If you only own what you can use, why would you make any more then you could personally use? Why would anyone make excess and specialize, which is pretty much the foundation of civilization.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I dunno, he might be onto something.  Take a page from Brave New World.  The easiest way to make everyone equal isn't to bring everyone up to the level of the highest member, it's to cut everyone down to the level of the lowest.

Just saw this, this is not what Brave New World was saying. The World State is anything but an equal society. In fact, the inherent inequalities of the castes enforced through stunting them as fetuses is about as unequal as you can get. The World State's thing was happiness. Anything they could do to maximize pleasure and minimize displeasure, they did. They even mentioned how they once reduced the working day to make people more "happy" but then changed it back because they were bored instead of happy to be working less, and boredom is unacceptable to the World State.

[SalmonGod]

Hey SalmonGod, I dunno if you are still reading this, but I sorta got a question/comment on your proposal. Other then the part you touched upon with it currently being impossible to even think about doing.

In your world you got going. Why would anyone make anything? You gave examples of things like farmers would own the farms they use, and factory workers will own the factories. But. And you even seemed to have a fairly unreasonable expectation that people would just make factories and farms and stuff. But even if that all worked out. Why would they make things? When I really think about it, it makes no sense. If you only own what you can use, why would you make any more then you could personally use? Why would anyone make excess and specialize, which is pretty much the foundation of civilization.

I can't understand why people wouldn't do those things.  I don't understand why removing the abstract imaginary number game from society is supposed to be so demotivating compared to working more directly for things that are beneficial to yourself and your community.  Do you really think most people would be happy merely subsisting?  We naturally seek ways to improve our quality of life all the time.  If people were as unmotivated as it seems like you're asserting they are (which is a really common response), then people wouldn't immerse themselves in student loan debt to get through college while working two jobs, and then bust their asses trying to establish a career for the hope that they might get to be comfortable the last 10 years of their life.  Everyone would drop out of high school as soon as they could and work at McDonald's forever. 

The only thing that would change is this: 

Right now personal gain is tied to your ability to seem valuable to those with more wealth than you.  You have to literally work against your own interests to advance your own interests.  I get paid about 2% of the value of my labor (and my work is completely pointless number game manipulation that accomplishes zero tangible benefit for anyone - I process shipments through customs).  The rest goes to increasing the wealth consolidation (otherwise known as profit) that puts me in this position of subservience in the first place.  I have absolutely zero power to do anything about it.

In a social libertarian system, personal gain and community gain are one and the same.  If you want something which your community lacks, then you find a way to create it.  To go beyond mere subsistence, people will specialize and cooperate.

There are many productive things I'd love to do, but I can't.  I'm a slave.  I have no bargaining power over the terms of my service to the owning class.  I can't do anything that can't be fit into a weekend or cut up into two hour chunks.  This means it's an incredible struggle to pursue the interests of anyone but the uber-wealthy executives and shareholders of my company.  For anything like equality to be possible, the fundamental elements of this relationship must be dismantled.

Edit:  Sorry if this came off a little ranty and I missed the point of your question.  I rattled it off very quickly on the last few minutes of my lunch break.

[LoSboccacc]

Tax the hell an return out of immobilized money.

One rich are all migrate or money is all invested in dull projects, everyone remaining is equally poor.

[ed boy]

I can't understand why people wouldn't do those things.  I don't understand why removing the abstract imaginary number game from society is supposed to be so demotivating compared to working more directly for things that are beneficial to yourself and your community.  Do you really think most people would be happy merely subsisting?  We naturally seek ways to improve our quality of life all the time.  If people were as unmotivated as it seems like you're asserting they are (which is a really common response), then people wouldn't immerse themselves in student loan debt to get through college while working two jobs, and then bust their asses trying to establish a career for the hope that they might get to be comfortable the last 10 years of their life.  Everyone would drop out of high school as soon as they could and work at McDonald's forever.

I can understand why I would work to improve my own situation, but not to improve other people's. If someone gave me the choice between working all day so someone else (who I don't know) can benefit, or sitting at home and masturbating* all day, I'm going to masturbate.

If I have a roof over my head, and food on my plate** (and everybody I care about has the same), then I have no reason for helping someone I don't care about. I might work if it means I can have a better roof over my head, or a fancier meal on my plate, but if nobody I care about is going to benefit, I'm going to wank all day long instead.

*replace with whatever non-productive activity that one enjoys you desire
**replace with heating,internet, etc to fufill one's desires

In a social libertarian system, personal gain and community gain are one and the same.  If you want something which your community lacks, then you find a way to create it.  To go beyond mere subsistence, people will specialize and cooperate.

This is something I don't believe is possible to achieve. There are certain limitations that can't be avoided through social reconstruction. There are physical and mathematical limitations on certain desireable elements that are smaller than community sizes.

I'm still waiting for a response to this:

That doesn't change that your influence removal efforts are still unequal,, just randomly unequal.

Could you elaborate, please?

[LoSboccacc]

The only real way is to make a big lottery where you win roles at random workplaces with barrier to specialization.

everyone play every year, and job are assigned from the bottom up. (first police, which you need many, then jobs along the food chain, then along the building and building maintenance chain, then the instruction chain, you get the idea)


Anyone can be extracted for a low level job but only qualified can participate for higher up jobs.

I can't decide if everyone is paid the same, if people higher up gets paid slightly less for the privilege of doing an enjoyable job or if it should be paid more as incentive for becoming more qualified - but that becomes just a matter of balancing the system.

unemployed gets to work as artists, writers, fashion designer, or go to forced school for jobs that are in shortage of qualified people etc.