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Bill: Educational Opportunity
Details
Submitted by[?]: National People's Gang
Status[?]: passed
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: February 2054
Description[?]:
| Although the government currently insists children and young people are receive education, it also restricts opportunities for it to be delivered in a variety of ways. Parents and children may only choose between state education or private education. The latter, of course, is mostly dependant on the ability to pay. By allowing home education, monitored to ensure it delivers a broad curriculum in line with other sectors and of at least the same quality, to the same standard, we offer a choice which is open to both rich and poor. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Education for children under adult age.
Old value:: Education is compulsory and has to happen at school.
Current: Education is compulsory and has to happen at school.
Proposed: Education is compulsory, but home schooling is permitted.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 17:48:52, May 16, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | Public education is already available to both rich and poor. Our public schools are of a high quality of excellence: they are the backbone of our nation. The CCF sees no need to tinker with our excellent high-quality system. |
| Date | 22:38:08, May 16, 2005 CET | From |  National People's Gang | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | This is a flatline cost/savings proposition which adds choice and diversity to the educational mix. However excellent our state school system may be it cannot hope to match teacher/pupil ratios possible in home education, nor can it provide, cost effectively, the breadth of teaching possible this option provides. A one-size-must-fit-all education service has to balance the needs of slower and quicker learners against a budget focused on provision for the "average". Although our education system provides high quality, to steal a common phrase from the exercise books of our young citizens, it "could do better". |
| Date | 22:53:17, May 16, 2005 CET | From | CNT/AFL | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | We will support this bill. Children in rural Lodamun especially, are being shortchanged, and we see no reason why properly monitored, adequate home-schooling shouldn't be an option. |
| Date | 01:06:02, May 17, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | Because home-schooling does not deliver the same educational valiue as public schooling. Education is most effective when done as a process of group discussion and learning designed to encourage critical thinking. The home schoolling environment usually consists of parental authority figures lecturing to children. The family environment is invaluable, but it is a different thing from effective community-based education. It encourages atomized individuals and sets back the cause of the community and the effectiveness of education. In addition, schools offer economies of scale that permit well-equipped science labs and the like. Home schooled children would suffer from this bill. It does not offer "educational opportunity," it is an attack on our public education system, so recently created and so hard-won. |
| Date | 03:24:01, May 17, 2005 CET | From | Chorus of Amyst | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | The Council will support this bill, especially since it stood against the compulsory education bill in the first place. |
| Date | 15:13:03, May 17, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | Actually, home schooling is generally more effective than schooling in an institution. The bill does not preclude - and monitoring would certainly encourage - parents opting for home schooling to do so in self-support groups which would facilitate group discussion. |
| Date | 18:11:59, May 17, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | Again, this is simply a neo-conservative attack on our public schools. There is no evidence that home schooling is better education, but there is a great deal of evidence that it is an inferior form of education. Public schools can offer all the alternatives needed. We are surprised, as an aside, to see the Amystian Council accept an intrusive and expensive monitoring system without its usual questioning of the expense. Of course the Council will vote for home schoolling, as that has been its position all along, but where are the questions about the expense and the questioning of how standards will be enforced? |
| Date | 18:56:14, May 17, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | It's not just better, it's a whole heap better: " Independent Evaluations of Homeschooling: In 1997, a study of 5,402 homeschool students from 1,657 families was released. It was entitled, "Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America." The study demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. A significant finding when analyzing the data for 8th graders was the evidence that homeschoolers who are homeschooled two or more years score substantially higher than students who have been homeschooled one year or less. The new homeschoolers were scoring on the average in the 59th percentile compared to students homeschooled the last two or more years who scored between 86th and 92nd percentile. " http://www.hslda.org/docs/nche/000010/200410250.asp And this: http://www.education-otherwise.org/ is a link from the UK's Department for Education site, which shows the richness of demonstrates some of the rich learning experiences possible through home schooling. In the light of this information, we'd like to point out to our colleagues of the CCF that there is no dishonour in changing a vote where previously unconsidered information becomes available. |
| Date | 20:06:41, May 17, 2005 CET | From | Chorus of Amyst | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | A monitoring system would presumably be paid at least in part by the money set for the public school system, as public schools would not need as much funding when fewer students attend. |
| Date | 22:22:59, May 17, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | Education is more than test scores. It is also a means to foster community. The CCF will not vote in favour of this bill. |
| Date | 23:06:31, May 17, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | Ah for the evangelism of a utopian liberal. Anyhow, following you in discarding your initial argument for "high quality of excellence" (can you share with us the callibrations for "fostering community"?) - here's some comments about socialisation from families engaged in homeschooling: "At the moment I have 12 children in my garden. They are shrieking with laughter because it’s raining hard and they have just discovered that the den they have spent the morning building has several leaks." "he best opportunity is in going to local group get-togethers, where children meet others in groups for play, activities, or trips out, along with their parents. Most of these meetings are informal and allow opportunity for the children to integrate with whom they like, without fear or judgement. Children of all ages, of both sexes, of a wide range of interests integrate happily. It is marvellous to see." "There are lots of new and exciting opportunities that we can explore together and we mustn't forget that even though the children don't go to school they still see and socialise with family members, friends of mine and their own. Socialisation did not start at school and it doesn't end there either." Next objection please. |
| Date | 00:10:08, May 18, 2005 CET | From | Cooperative Commonwealth Federation | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | Certainly no objections have been abandoned. Evidence from this "United States" merely proves that their public system is underfunded, not that home-schooling is superior. And frankly, the uptopianism here is entirely coming from the home-schooling advocates. I have met far too many of the victims of right-wing religious fanatics who resist public education to ever support a bill of this nature. Other parties may do as they like. The CCF is quite prepared to lose this vote, but will never give its consent to anything that detracts from the public school system. We believe this bill does detract from it, and must with the greatest possible respect vote in opposition, even knowing the bill will pass. (By the way, the Minister of Education would also have to resign given this rejection of CCF education policy.) |
| Date | 02:10:31, May 18, 2005 CET | From | National People's Gang | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | The trouble with fanatics is that they force people into one way on living, they always deny people free choice. |
| Date | 05:02:44, May 18, 2005 CET | From | Lodamun Centre-Left Coalition | To | Debating the Educational Opportunity |
| Message | We congratulate the Albert Party on getting this bill just-about passed, but the MLP has to vote with our allies in the Federation. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 50 | ||||
| no | Total Seats: 44 | ||||
| abstain | Total Seats: 0 |
| Random fact: The majority of nations in Particracy are "Culturally Protected" with an established cultural background. Only the "Culturally Open" nations are not bound by the rules surrounding culture. The Cultural Protocols Index should be consulted for more information about the cultural situation of each nation. |
| Random quote: "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. " - P. J. O Rourke |