My topic directly relates to privatization as discussed in class because although I do not attempt to justify the privatization as being fair or unfair, I simply try to explain it as the result of a flawed American educational ideology. I do not mean to say our ideology of education was or is wrong, rather to the extent to which it has been carried out, one must surely see an issue. This issue being explained, in my devil's advocate research paper, that too many students enrolling in higher education has resulted in the need for greater private involvement in paying for college because the government is unable to fund so many students going to school, nor is the nation capable of appropriately employing (employed/salaried at a rate applicable and proportional to their education) so many collegiate students. Privatization has resulted in students being put under such great stress that if they are able to graduate from college they are unable to make good on their loans, mainly because they do not have the salary, initial capital, or health.
Default: The Student Loan Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvQR93C6n2E
I think you could definitely critique the "college for all" movement -- and, especially, the way this "college for all" mantra comes from our government -- spoken by Obama and secretary Arne Duncan on many occasions. The logic of "college for all" leads to many ills: it makes less funding available for trade schools; it forces all students into the Common Core State Standards where they might not succeed; it drives up the amount of college debt and may be helping to inflate a bubble in much the same way that government policies encouraging everyone to buy a home helped to create the housing bubble; it leads government policy makers to back for-profit schools as a necessary evil for achieving the goal of college for all, etc. I think you can make this into a topic.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Germany may allow all who qualify to go to college for free, but they also have built an amazing system of trade schools for those who cannot get into college.
The quote from Emerson:
ReplyDeleteSelf-Reliance
Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.
http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm
His writings are the spiritual foundation of self-reliant individualism.They inform the work of Thoreau -- who informs the book by Ilgunas we read.