#31451: Riggsveda — 07/09  at  06:33 PM
I understand the practical elements of arguing a position on economic grounds, but why do we always have to do it? The current mad-whirl-free-market-extravaganza atmosphere and the near-religious awe in which our country holds capitalism means that everything, whether it's education or health care or keeping the populace from starvation, has to be reduced to an economic equation before it's defensible. I'm sick of it. For a country so immersed in the idea of Christian godliness, there's damned little of it going around. Why can't we just argue that education, or any other social or humanitarian good, is valuable in and of itself, without having to justify it in terms of dollars and cents?

This is what the brave new world of Grover Norquist has finally reduced us to...having to revert to economic justifications in order to get our moral arguments heard. We need to stop getting suckered into this game.

#31455: John M. Price — 07/09  at  06:48 PM
Has this decision and the reasons been published in the papers there?

That surely needs to be done. Start with the preachers. Show them what they've sown with their anti-intellectual posings.

#31459: Martin Wagner — 07/09  at  07:36 PM
Should I be troubled by the notion that, in a country with universal health care, one natural by-product would be lower wages for better trained and more well educated workers? That doesn't seem right. Taxpayer-funded health care aside, underpaying hard-working and intelligent professionals simply because you can (hey, they don't have to buy insurance, so I guess there's nothing else for them to spend that money on, so we don't need to give it to them) is reprehensible to me.

#31460: — 07/09  at  08:03 PM
I dunno, Martin. Employer-provided health insurance is effectively a salary increase, so it's reasonable to consider universal state-funded health care to be the same, and therefore it offsets "underpaying" professionals. Income should be indexed to cost of living for a full understanding of its value. It seems reasonable to offer lower wages in an environment where less wages still maintain a decent living standard.

To the original article, I'd like to argue, being a southerner, that we ain't that stupid down here. So far I've come up with nothing of a rebuttal.

#31461: Bryson Brown — 07/09  at  08:03 PM
Two things worth adding, from a northern point of view.

One is that on the whole our university system is less well funded than the U.S. (even when you consider only state schools), and tuitions have risen drastically (especially in my home province of Alberta), so our educational advantage is not that great.

As for salaries and paying people less, there are lots of different markets for labour, and different expectations in different sectors. Our tax system funds a lot of health care costs here (around 70% overall, I believe)-- but the total cost of our system is only about 9% of GDP (I think it's about 14% in the U.S.). The upshot is that what Toyota needs to pay in wages and benefits is lower up here. That's what happens in the labour market; hardly surprising...

#31462: decrepitoldfool — 07/09  at  08:03 PM
Hold it! Apples and oranges. Pay me less, but provide health care, comes about the same. If it winds up with greater chance of industries coming to my neck of the woods, comes out as a plus.

#31463: decrepitoldfool — 07/09  at  08:04 PM
Doh! Sorry, two other comments popped in while I was typing. My comments were directed at MW.

#31464: John M. Price — 07/09  at  08:07 PM
I do not think the '$4-$5 cheaper' is a salary referent. Rather it is the basic cost of an employee including salary, business insurance for the plant to have them, retirement, etc. etc.

#31465: — 07/09  at  08:12 PM
Okay, in defense of the American South, E.O. Wilson is from Alabama, dammit! Whew . . .

#31466: ekzept — 07/09  at  08:15 PM

Should I be troubled by the notion that, in a country with universal health care, one natural by-product would be lower wages for better trained and more well educated workers?

compared to what?

a progressive income tax already assumes that those earning more ought to pay more for common services, such as national defense. is that wrong?

ancient Athens, embodying a Hellenic ideal, felt that sumptuary taxes and laws were perfectly legitimate, and that people ought not be wealthier than some not legislated but commonly understood threshold. being wealthier than that was considered hoarding resources.

renouncing the Commons in practice and spirit leads to interesting abominations. on Cape Cod, there used to be an understanding that while people might hold private property, beaches were public ground, traversable by strollers and runners. with the Ascent of Modern Individualism, most beaches now are guarded by ugly "Private Property--No Trespass" signs. in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist strike, the Modern Individual might well conclude they do not have bravery or helping their neighbor in their job description, and so leave the dying guy on the ground 10 feet away to the professionals.

the problem with the attempt to reduce everything to economic parameters is, in my opinion, not in itself bad or wrong. the problem is that those doing it oversimplify, trying to reduce it to a single scalar value, like cost. it is surely a multidimensional valuation. the trouble with those is that you cannot compare two of them directly, knowing how one is "better" than another. attempting to do that comparison without realizing it is the fallacy of economic conservativism, no more, no less.

#31467: PZ Myers — 07/09  at  08:16 PM
I tried hard to make it clear that this is not a Southern problem. It's an American problem. I'm in Minnesota, which seems to be a Northern state, and we're struggling with declining support for education here, too.

#31468: John Emerson — 07/09  at  08:17 PM
The value of health insurance is hard to estimate. An individual can't buy health insurance for himself at what it costs his company, so for S300/mo, a company could give a worker something worth $500/mo (fictitious example). Many people would gladly take a lower-paying job with insurance.

I think that the educational difference in Canada isn't a higher top, but a higher bottom. I think that the same might be true of the upper Midwest. (ND has the highest educational level in the US according to some standards. I don't think that this is because they have great HSs, but because they have little illiteracy there). American bad schools and bad students are very very bad.

#31469: John Emerson — 07/09  at  08:21 PM
PZ, according to statistics at Brad DeLong, in about 2000 the 8th Congressional district (where you live) was the poorest predominantly-white district in the North (also excluding border states). In 1960 the county where I grew up (Todd) was poorer per capita than a third of the counties in Alabama. I think that education there is better than you'd expect given that.

#31470: — 07/09  at  08:23 PM
PZ, to your much deserved credit, you did a fine job in not framing it as a Southern problem, but an American one - an important distinction. Those of us in the South, I guess, are a little hypersensitive, cause, you know, the South has such a history of sensitivity . . . jebus I'm a goofball.

#31471: John M. Price — 07/09  at  08:27 PM
Considering the 'stellar' record of the South, I wonder not how to bring them to the present, but whether or not Lincoln made a mistake in wanting to keep them.

But that's just me, I'm sure.

#31473: — 07/09  at  08:35 PM
Heh, point taken John. But I would add, despite our ass backwards Jim Crowism which is as tenacious as our kudzu, we have learned a lot about race relations, being that we're all down here together. I'm reminded of some time spent in Portland, where the sociopolitical climate is far more liberal/ progressive, and yet racism was, from what I saw, rather open and accepted, and black folks were few.

That, and at least we have some great Veterinary schools, NCSU and UGA, and we have UNC Chapel Hill. We're not totally retarded down here.

#31474: — 07/09  at  08:40 PM
Mr. Price, please don't be such a jerk. I'll leave it at that and refrain from launching into any rants about people's attitudes regarding the south. Jamie, you make some good points, but I wish you wouldn't weakly offer us up as "well, not totally retarded, just kinda backwards."

#31475: — 07/09  at  08:40 PM
DeGenerate Motors here in Oshawa Ontario took the prize as the top assembly plant in N. America. Booyah!

#31476: — 07/09  at  08:47 PM
No harm meant, Elena; I'm being a little snarky, I know. But I do think we should be honest about what we have going on down here. Perhaps we get a bad rep, but don't you think we should be frank about what we've done to get that reputation? I admit I'm being a bit childish in my attitude, and sorry if I'm being offensive. I do get frustrated by the attitudes I deal with here on a daily basis.

#31477: — 07/09  at  09:04 PM
Yes, Jamie, I believe that total honesty is the only way to go if we ever want change. Here's where I'm coming from: I grew up in Georgia, then went to New York City for college, then moved back a year ago. When I was up North I heard so much ignorant bullshit about the South it blew my mind. I also noticed that there is deeply rooted racism in the North (and I imagine in every region in the US), but that it just presents itself differently. In many ways I find the situation surrounding race in the South to be healthier. The issue is very much on the table here. If I point something out as racist, people will listen and tend to take it seriously. The racism I observed in the North tended to be more covert, and people tended to be in deeper denial about it. I dig what you're saying, but I think it applies to everyone, not just Southerners. This is a pet peeve of mine, and I think it lets people from other regions off the hook - racism is something "those southerners" do. Also, people who make comments along the lines of John Price above seem to be forgetting a huge portion of the South (all those who worked for civil rights, for example). That's my two cents as someone who is a radical feminist anti-racist, who has devoted her life to working for social justice and education (as a teacher), and who is very much Southern.

#31478: Les Lane — 07/09  at  09:06 PM
What I've yet to see recognized with respect to Canadian manufacture is that health care of below average wage earners is subsidized by above average earners. Manufacturers are unlikely to ignore such a bonus.

#31479: ekzept — 07/09  at  09:09 PM
what i don't understand is why, as a society, we don't recognize that the health care system as present exists with employers as the primary customers and insurance companies as middlemen. patients are just cattle. doctors like to think they have an influence, but they are and always have been hired hands.

and, if we don't like employers being customers, then we should get that changed.

#31481: — 07/09  at  09:17 PM
And Elena totally nails it! That's much the same thing that I was getting at, but you gave a far more informative argument, I guess. To our credit as southerners, we can look all through the historical literature and find examples of how we've grappled with the issue of race more effectively than the north, and I think it's important to acknowledge. We're less segregated, from what I understand, and even if we look at the writings of black intellectuals (DuBois' "talented tenth," C.W. Chesnutt's "The Wife of His Youth") in the past, there are undercurrents of racism.

While I'm confronted with the race issue all day, working in a neighborhood that is literally divided by the "railroad tracks" - poor and black on one side, rich and white on the other, we still have a long way to go. For example, I often refer to myself as a feminist, but being a man, from my women friends this gets my expressions that indicate I asked them the square root of eleventeen, and from my male friends, they're like "dude, are you gay or somethin?" And then they tell me that God is gonna destroy 'merica if we don't pass an amendment banning gay marriage.

Anyway, your points are well taken, and I agree that we southerners probably have a better grasp of the subtleties of race relations. And you say you're a teacher, well I salute you with utmost respect!

#31482: — 07/09  at  09:26 PM
It's a really tough problem. The only schools in the U.S. that I think are decent, with the exception of a few of the competitive schools in New York, e.g., Hunter College High is fine, are private, and they cost $20k for day students. (I'm just never going to be able to afford children period.)

Some of them have fancy extras, but many do not. I don't know how you provide a quality education for less. How do you get enough good teachers? (A lot of the teachers in even "good" public schools went to thirs-rate colleges and got SAT scores below 1200. I wouldn't want my kid taught by someone who got less than 1300.)

#31484: — 07/09  at  09:34 PM
Abby, we should be careful in judging the quality of a teacher by wether they matriculated at a top tier or lower level college. This may have as much to do with access as it does competence - probably moreso. Besides, what a student gets out of college is less dependent on the instution than on their own diligence. I'm an adult student currently at a community college, and I'd put some of my profs up against any Ivy League prof, both in pedagogical skill and in knowledge of their respective subjects. This is a very appropriate time to play the class card, I think.

#31485: — 07/09  at  09:37 PM
Thanks, Jamie. I won't offer up a long-winded response, because I don't think the southern angle is the focus of this blog post at all, so I don't want to hijack the comments more than I already have. At any rate, we're defintely on the same page. Keep calling yourself a feminist. We can't do much to change society as a whole without men involved. (Although I know what you mean. I certainly don't come right out with the word feminist in conversations with my more rural, more conservative extended family. I just quietly make logical arguments based on fairness, no matter that these are "feminist" ideas.)

Now let's see if I have more success resisting the urge to give a long-winded response to Abby on the topic of public education.

#31487: John Emerson — 07/09  at  09:38 PM
A lot of sharp people went to mediocre high schools. One advantage of the American system is that it's possible to catch up. In France, Taiwan, and many other places, your fate is usually sealed by age 16.

Abby, people with high test scores usually figure out better things to do than teach HS. My guess is that it would be demographically impossible to staff all high schools with people that sharp.

In my son's friends the controlling variable for students' education seemed to be the parents' expectations. Some parents thought a C was an OK grade, and some would punish a kid for a B.

#31489: — 07/09  at  09:40 PM
Ah, crickey! I couldn't resist it, at least a little, ELena. The whole issue of public ed - it's purpose, what it should accomplish, ahh. Sorry, Dr. Myers. I've ranted on your post way off topic. Blame it on the beer, I guess. . . .

#31491: — 07/09  at  09:48 PM
Health care here in Canada incurs lower overhead. The single payer method simplifies accounting for doctors and hospitals considerably. Accounting for a Canadian hospital will usually occupy a single room, in the US a whole wing to service the plethora of insurance schemes.

The system here has a lot of room for improvement, but here a loss of a job does not lead to loss of coverage. Benefits do not terminate when employment does and there iare definite advantages for small firms and the self employed.

#31499: — 07/09  at  11:25 PM
Part of the problem with our education system is that it's still set up with the assumption that really smart people will become teachers because they can't get other jobs. In years past, this was a natural assumption: women were unable to enter other professions (like medicine or law) because of artificial barriers, and would become teachers instead. (Same thing with African-Americans, by the way.)

Now, presumably, any girl who wants to become a lawyer can do so. She won't be shunted off into an "appropriate" profession like teaching. The same way that girls who would have become nurses 20 or 30 years ago are becoming doctors instead.

And yet both the teaching and nursing professions are still set up with low pay and long hours and an assumption that they'll take those conditions and like them because they have no other choice.

#31503: Erica — 07/09  at  11:49 PM
PZ: I think you misrepresent the libertarian argument against socialized healthcare and education (or services in general). The argument is not that someone who is not benefitting from the services should not have to pay for it - it is that people should have the right to select the services for which they trade. Conscious choice on the part of the consumer based on individual experience and personally trusted advice not only makes competition more efficient, but making ones choices for oneself also tends to make one smarter by necessity.

Of course, that's a broad small-l libertarian position; I don't much identify with the party anymore for a variety of reasons, so I can't make claims for the big-L Libertarian positions. Maybe that's what they're putting up as talking points, I don't know.

Incidentally, I noticed that you have a science-only portion of your site. Do you classify your evolution-vs.-creationism pieces under the science portion?

#31506: — 07/10  at  12:25 AM
I do think that public education is important, but I spent a couple of years in public schools that were supposedly good, and the teachers were just dumb.

1300 is not a high enough SAT score to get you into an Ivy league school. I'm just asking for bright. I don't think that you need to have attended an Ivy league school to be a good teacher. (Williams and Amherst are also okay, just kidding.)

When I say third-rate, I mean somewhere like Bunker Hill community college. (I also think it's important to understand that in different parts of the country community colleges serve different purposes. A lot of people in California go to community college for a couple of years, because it's cheap, and then they transfer into the UC system. It works pretty well for people who are taking intro science courses especially. On the east coast it's much more common for those schools to be geared toward producing people with Associate's degrees.) And Bunker Hill is atrocious. We tried to get them to work on a prison program to help incarcerated prisoners do their first two years of college.

BU has a great free program for prisoners. No tuition. This is especially important now that felons are ineligible for federal loans. (The number of college programs for prisoners has dropped from a few hundred to just a handful.)

I'd like to see much better public schools. I don't think that we can expect that property taxes will adequately fund them, because I think that the cost of a good education is a lot higher than people are willing to admit.

Sorry for rambling.

#31509: Porlock Junior — 07/10  at  01:29 AM
It's not the first time that the advantage of Canadian firms from single-payer health care has been noticed. You can't achieve a proper contempt for Free Tade Agreements till you recall the first outcome of the US-Canada FTA that was the predecessor of NAFTA: Our guys, the good fellows who cut trees, sued the Canadians for having government health care. Improper subsidy to Canadian businesses, you know. Dunno how the complaint got resolved, but I am not making this up. Free, unrestricted, open trade. Right.

#31524: Ancarett — 07/10  at  06:33 AM
Preserveing national health care is the top priority of many Canadians. Unfortunately, higher education has been, as in the states, increasingly underfunded. Highlighted fundraising campaigns have done little to right this problem.

Still, I'm not surprised that our health care system is seen as a competitive advantage.

#31525: — 07/10  at  06:39 AM
Toyota will still be paying for the health care, but in Canada, in the form of taxes rather than directly insuring its employees. This is a testament to the efficiency of the Canadian health service: Toyota are in fact saying that they couldn't do it better themselves.

#31528: John Emerson — 07/10  at  06:49 AM
"The argument is not that someone who is not benefitting from the services should not have to pay for it".

I hear that sort of argument often, and I think that it's the bottom-line libertarian argument. The "personal choice" argument is a sort of watered-down form. With insurance "personal choice" tends to defeat the purpose, which is spreading the risk over a large group, and putting a floor down that no one can fall below.

A 1300 SAT would put you in the bottom quarter of an Ivy League school. The 25th percentile at Princeton was 1370 (2003).

Someone who wanted the absolute best education for their kid would probably send the kid to one of the best private HSs, if they could afford it. This isn't a solution for most people, and raising public schools to that level would be impossible (talent pool to small, too many competing jobs). In the same way, you could probably run a fantastic day care if you paid &20 / hr, but almost no one could afford it.

#31531: PZ Myers — 07/10  at  06:58 AM

The argument is not that someone who is not benefitting from the services should not have to pay for it - it is that people should have the right to select the services for which they trade. Conscious choice on the part of the consumer based on individual experience and personally trusted advice not only makes competition more efficient, but making ones choices for oneself also tends to make one smarter by necessity.

That's a nice sentiment, but it ignores the reality. People tend to be short-sighted, and favor what feels good over what's good for them.

Libertarians seem to be afflicted with the same flaws as Marxists: an inability to recognize that human nature conflicts with their expectations.

#31534: Alon Levy — 07/10  at  07:11 AM
It's not so much the efficiency of the Canadian system as the inefficiency of the American system. The level of spending in Canada is fairly average for a developed country; it's the USA that spends twice as much as the rest of the first world.

#31541: — 07/10  at  07:58 AM
John Emerson,

The best private high schools cost more than $30,000 per year. THe best school in the world costs 22,000 pounds.

Trackback: Durn dem Can, canad, northerners Tracked on: The Supreme Irony of Life... (72.9.234.70) at 2005 07 10 10:12:57
Living in Texas, we are usually thankful for states like Alabama, and Mississippi. To read the story of why Ontario, Canada over Alabama or Mississippi it only reinforces our view.

#31558: Erica — 07/10  at  11:28 AM
John Emerson said:

"The argument is not that someone who is not benefitting from the services should not have to pay for it".

I hear that sort of argument often, and I think that it's the bottom-line libertarian argument. The "personal choice" argument is a sort of watered-down form. With insurance "personal choice" tends to defeat the purpose, which is spreading the risk over a large group, and putting a floor down that no one can fall below.

I have a suspicion that you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes the "bottom-line". The idea of the right to make choices affecting ones own welfare is the moral foundation of libertarianism. Shrugging that off as a watered-down form in favor of the purely practical statement that people shouldn't have to pay for stuff from which they don't benefit makes it really easy to dismiss libertarians as a bunch of whiny, penny-pinching assholes who don't understand (pick one: the greater good, human nature, the plight of the common man, how to tie their shoes, etc.). Now, I'm all for practicality - but not at the cost of someone else's liberty. The money is not the bottom line. The choice is. The choice can be with regard to how to best manage ones own money, but it's still fundamentally about personal choice.

I'm not going to get into a long, drawn-out conversation on insurance in PZ's comments. I've given the topic a good deal of thought, and I think that I'd inevitably do my position a disservice by posting a watered-down version here. Perhaps it's time I discussed that on my own space.

PZ Myers said:

That's a nice sentiment, but it ignores the reality. People tend to be short-sighted, and favor what feels good over what's good for them.

Libertarians seem to be afflicted with the same flaws as Marxists: an inability to recognize that human nature conflicts with their expectations.

Again with all due respect, I see the argument that people tend to choose what feels good for them over what is good for them as equally short-sighted. I might make a choice regarding my own welfare that appears to you to be more of the former rather than the latter - does that give you the right to choose for me? Are you somehow more enlightened about what's good for me than I am?

People will make bad decisions. But people making decisions for themselves are both closer to their own problems and to the consequences for a bad decision.

The thing that baffles libertarians is the idea that government officials are going to be somewhat immune to that 'human nature' thing you talked about, including bad decision making - particularly when they are not necessarily the ones who have to face the consequences for a bad decision. If I have the power to make a decision without having to bear the brunt of the consequences, then it's even easier to make decisions that just feel good, as opposed to being good.

Now, I'll scram. I won't leave any more comments on here unless they appear to be specifically solicited. I didn't come here to try and convert you to the one true Kool-aid - I just thought that since you were offering up the libertarian argument, it might be good to have a libertarian to fact-check it.

#31559: — 07/10  at  11:30 AM
In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

"Most people don't think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage," he said.

I'm a little confused why government-backed health care would result in substantially lower overall costs. Afterall, the money is just being funneled differently in the two countries. In the US it's employeer->health care industry, but in Canada, it's employeer->government->health care industry. I can think of a few things Canada might have on it's side -- like the muscle to pay health care workers less money (part of the reason so many Canadian nurses work in the US - see http://www.nurseweek.com/news/features/00-07/canada.html), or substandard/understaffed health care (I've heard a lot of Canadians complain about very long wait times to see a doctor), which could lower costs. The fact that low-paid workers aren't paying for all their health care (because taxes are progressive, meaning that well-paid workers are subsidizing low-paid worker's health care) means that companies are (relatively) encouraged to move low-paying jobs to Canada, but similarly disincentivized to move high-paying jobs to Canada. That might also work in Toyota's favor (assuming these are lower-paying jobs).

But, I'm doubtful that this is as substantial (several dollars per hour) cost savings, and still skeptical about the comment that government-based health care offers some sort of competitive advantage for drawing companies.

#31564: — 07/10  at  11:41 AM
One more note on this: assuming health care costs around $250/month, that works out to a cost of about $1/hour (40 hours * 4.3 weeks). If Canada offers health care for 20% less cost than their American counterparts, that works out to an $0.80 per hour for Canadian workers. That's only a cost savings of 20 cents per hour. Like I said, I'm skeptical that this substantial cost savings exists for companies. Assuming that this cost savings actually exists, it's not substantial next to the $4-5 per hour difference between Canada and the US.

#31565: John Emerson — 07/10  at  11:43 AM
One of the problems libertarians have is that there are so many kinds of them. I know more than one kind myself, and they tend to be as I just described them.

A lot of the purpose of both government and insurance is to protect individuals both from their own bad judgement and from just plain bad luck. When libertarians give individuals total autonomy and personal control of what had been (or might have been) public resources, the safety net is gone. What happens to the losers? They've already spent their share of the safety net.

I absolutely do not believe that people are, as a rule, better able to handle their money than any one else is. Some of the ordinary investors I know made disastrous mistakes; one of them threw away $100,000 worth of painful saving from regular wages, moonlighting, and sweat-equity. He was a Libertarian, too.

#31569: Alon Levy — 07/10  at  12:06 PM
As a (social) liberal, I would say that the argument about choosing what is best for oneself is inapplicable here. The problem is that the existence of a choice itself reduces the available options. To give a moderately useful analogy, a market-based health insurance is like choosing between buying a new laptop and renting a bigger apartment, whereas public health insurance is like being able to afford both. Since public health care costs about half as much as private health care, the increase in efficiency will be able to give individuals greater choice by giving them more money. The United States spends about 4,500 US dollars per year per citizen on health care; Canada spends the equivalent of 2,500 US dollars, adjusted for the cost of living. The 2,000 dollars/person give the people they go to new and improved choices, so that instead of worrying which health care plan to choose, people can worry about, say, more consumer goods or day care or better housing.

Feel free to take it to email if you don't want to continue here.

#31575: Walt Pohl — 07/10  at  12:34 PM
Abby: Let's not be too hyperbolic. There are many fine public high schools in the United States, and not just in New York. Each big city has magnet schools that are pretty good, and many suburbs have good schools.

#31578: Alon Levy — 07/10  at  12:52 PM
I can think of a few things Canada might have on it's side -- like the muscle to pay health care workers less money (part of the reason so many Canadian nurses work in the US - see http://www.nurseweek.com/news/features/00-07/canada.html), or substandard/understaffed health care (I've heard a lot of Canadians complain about very long wait times to see a doctor), which could lower costs.

Evidently, it's not USA vs. Canada, but USA vs. the rest of the first world. Most devloped countries spend between 2,000 and 3,000 PPP dollars per capita per year on health care.

#31588: — 07/10  at  01:18 PM
"It's a really tough problem. The only schools in the U.S. that I think are decent, with the exception of a few of the competitive schools in New York, e.g., Hunter College High is fine, are private, and they cost $20k for day students. (I'm just never going to be able to afford children period.)"

Where on earth are you getting this from? You can get a fantastic education at any number of state schools, and you can get a crap education at any number of private schools.

What you get from college has a lot more to do with what you put into it than it does with the sign on the front door.

#31593: Alon Levy — 07/10  at  01:39 PM
Evidently, people who complete schools with an IB diploma or a well-known European one such as the GCE can and do get many advanced placement credits at American universities.

#31594: — 07/10  at  01:40 PM
Interesting comments defending the South - especially from Elana who grew up in the South and went to college up north then moved back down South. Well I grew-up in NY and went to grad and law school down South so here is my perspective. The schools are worse down South and it has nothing to do with anti-intellectual preachers (although they don’t help much these days please do remember that it was a religious Northerner who funded the set-up of secondary education down South – John D. Rockefeller). I'll use FL as an example - double sessions and portables at many (most?) high schools because the state wouldn't provide funding for new schools and when it did, the community where the school was to be built filed NIMBY lawsuits to have the school built somewhere else and thus the schools didn’t get built. Education was not a prized asset during my tenure in that state.

If one wants to hear, as Elana described it ignorant bullshit, one merely has to ask about the Civil War (oops, The War of Northern Aggression) down South. It wasn't over slavery because, as I was told during my stay down south by a number of people, "the slaves liked it." And only if the South had railroads they would have won (and then still had slaves?). One could go to GA and visit Stone Mountain, the Southern Mount Rushmore - a monument carved into a mountain depicting people that led the battles to keep blacks as slaves (don’t forget the laser light show at night) Is it ignorant bullshit,to call people that celebrate generals and politicians who fought to maintain slavery wrong and/or racist? Better yet, take the tour of Stone Mountain and listen how the guide states that the land where the monument is located was appropriated from the Indians (the reactions from the tour guide and group when I blurted out "you mean stolen" was priceless). One could also go to Richmond and visit Monument Blvd. (I have) where Stonewall Jackson is facing north to repel the Yankees horde (just remember not to state the obvious which is that Robert E Lee is facing south so he must still be retreating - it doesn't go over well, I know, I said it). Then again, the placement of the Arthur Ashe monument didn’t go over well either (when visiting Richmond make sure to visit Mama Zu’s – the best Italian food outside of NYC). It really was so much fun (sarcasm off) as a student watching the Old South Parades at Auburn where the male students grew beards and wore Confederate war uniforms waving confederate battle flags (I guess the uniforms and beards were to differentiate the parade from all other days?), the women dolled up to the nines in antebellum dresses and the racial epithets flew like it was a Klan meeting (all with the blessing of Auburn University – to give AU credit, it is now a “New South Parade”). Ignorant bullshit if you ask me

As for the hate-ism down South, try living in AL and not being a Protestant. When the Southern Baptist Church in AL comes up with a formula (ca. 1993) for the number of non-Baptists that will survive the rapture (virtually all Jews and Catholics don’t make it – I can’t imagine the “hell” in store for the Hindus, Muslims, etc…) it is a racist place - a place with deep rooted racism.. All ignorant bullshit - right?. I am not sure what would be “worse” – being a Jew or being Black during the time I lived down South in terms of how many people hated you for who you are. And down South, the racists amongst the populace still think that if they act in a certain way, you’ll leave. Fly a Confederate flag, call one a “n****r” over and over, refer to Catholics as idol worshippers and belittle their "driving G-d" (anti-other religion would be a better way to describe it – I can still remember what an old girlfriend would tell me about the administrators from my Dept in Auburn who would bad mouth Jews after church services – the admins never knew my G/F went to the same Southern Baptist church and heard all the bile they spewed), make overt threats and on and on. Up north – NY from my reference point - where there still is racism but not on the same scale as down south (there are exceptions such a Howard Beach but up north, that type of incident is always condemned whereas during my time in AL, “they” seemed to deserve whatever “they” got because “they” were uppity) your neighbor may hate you but s/he has enough respect for you to leave you alone and stew in his/her own racist anger without overt actions or words (is that what you meant by covert? A Northerner keeps his/her hatred in check and lives by the rule of law rather than overtly acting upon irrational impulses). The Northerner’s boss is more than likely someone of a different faith, color, or country of origin – the Northerner has no choice but to accept diversity (except at places such as Columbia where profs spew anti-Semitic drivel under the pretense of academic freedom – and the admins accept it). Down South, it’s still the white male running the store/company/office and the minority employee cleaning up at night. In grad school in Auburn, there was 1 black student (at least in my area of study) and no black profs anywhere to be found but plenty of minorities sweeping the halls and emptying the trash cans – that isn’t racist? Deep rooted racism? That isn’t ignorant bullshit? You’ve been smoking crack if you don’t think so or is it merely ignorant bullshit by a Northerner

Back to education for a second here. The linked article states this

He said Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.”

Pictorials? You have to be kidding me. Pictorials to train the workers? Now I know why there is a warning not to eat the drying agent used in packaging.

Now don’t get me wrong, not everyone was racist (or barefoot chewing tobacco) but it appeared as if the South – at least certain areas of it if not most areas – were living under a bubble that didn’t allow in the real world. It was akin to the current Memin stamp response by the Mexican gov’t – we have always done it like this, we like it and don’t think it is wrong (racist), so it’s not and don't tell us to change. When the bubble bursts it will be a huge shock to many many people (the bubble did burst in a small town in Mississippi recently with that conviction for the murder of the civil rights workers back in the 60’s). Again, I don’t intend to be entirely disparaging in my comments about the South but my experience there showed me that if one wants to define an area by ignorant bullshit then the South should be at the top of the list. Of note, although I never lived in TN, the people from that state tended to be the nicest folks one would ever want to meet (could it be b/c half the state had the sense not to support a war to maintain slavery?)

One last note for the revisionist historians amongst us that still believe the States Rights dogma (if there are any at all here) – here is a quote you should memorize.

Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition."

#31597: — 07/10  at  01:51 PM
The sign in the front door is pretty meaningless. Most schools considered among the world´s ten best live from their past accomplishments and/or from hiring superstars who contribute little to the school´s level.

#31603: — 07/10  at  01:59 PM
Since when did the cost of a school determine how much a child learned? Didn't all of you learn most of what you know outside of school? I know that the countless hours I spent at the library or outside looking at all the wonderous things around me has shaped me to a greater extent than anything I ever was taught in school.

Maybe it's because I went to a few public schools, or maybe it's because my mind explodes with joy at the thought of feeding my son's desire for knowledge. Maybe I'm weird that way...

I know that school attempts to impart a set of knowledge and simple skills onto the children who pass through their doors, but it's the child who either wants to learn or doesn't. If the child does want to learn, all they need is someone to help guide them. The rest is up to them.

-Tiskel

#31605: Alon Levy — 07/10  at  02:14 PM
Most schools considered among the world´s ten best live from their past accomplishments and/or from hiring superstars who contribute little to the school´s level.

It's not true. The US News and World Report rankings are based on criteria such as students' SAT scores, student-to-faculty ratios, and graduation rates; the various international rankings are based on the total number of publications or on aggregate citation indices. Furthermore, it's safe to say that all major research universities, of which there are about fifty in the United States and, I would guess, another fifty elsewhere, have superstars on their faculties. A single superstar doesn't change much for these institutions; what makes the difference between #10 and #30 is numerous distinguished researchers.

#31607: ekzept — 07/10  at  02:50 PM
there have been changes for the worse in upstate New York school systems, far from big cities.

parents seem to care less about what and how their kids do in schools. this might be a side effect of both parents working longer hours, to achieve that high economic productivity New York and the United States are so proud of touting, or it could be that they simply don't care.

some teachers are increasingly Regents-focussed. the Board of Regents made laughingstocks of themselves again this year by rescaling the results of the Math-B Regents exam so people passed at the 50 percentile.

kids are prohibited from libraries at certain times of day, so librarians don't need to contend with them. i thought the idea was to encourage kids to use libraries....

we still get an Aaron Pixton once in a while, but my son tells me that there was a high school student from Boston taking Math 25a-25b with him at Harvard.

yeah, under-paying teachers doesn't help.

as my other son reported in a paper he did for our high school, there's a systematic "parallel track" for athletes in high schools and even the best colleges which kids seem to think will be their salvation.

and, increasingly, cheating is seen as an acceptable way to get by. kids solicit folks to do their homework for pay on craigslist. i have even seen sites based outside the USA turning doing homework and take-home exams into a business. ("Hey, it's outsourcing.")

#31632: Abiola Lapite — 07/10  at  07:53 PM
Not to derail this conversation, or downplay the importance of education, but I think there's something crucial missing from the post which inspired all this discussion:

Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, whose members will see increased business with the new plant.

Note that the association Mr. Fedchun heads just happens to be a consortium of Canadian firms which stand to do business with Toyota, and he is not in any way speaking as a representative of Toyota itself. It may well be that Canadian workers are better educated (though this may be mostly an artifact of Canada's points-based immigration system and distance from the Mexican border, to the extent that it's even true), but all we really have here is one guy badmouthing the competition as a bunch of barefoot illiterates; I'd take it with as much seriousness as a Briton blaming all of France's problems on the sub-par hygiene of that country's citizens ...

#31641: — 07/10  at  10:28 PM
Abiola, Still, it was education that forced Toyota's decision. Expensive but educated workers are preferrable to subsidies and cheap uneducated labor. That it was said by a gloating competitor does not make it less true. BTW, thanks to NAFTA, Toyota could have sited its plant in Mexico, with even cheaper workforce, but the idea didn't come up.

#31687: ken — 07/11  at  11:04 AM
I agree with PZ that educational issue raised is not strictly a "southern problem" but it only appears to be by the story. And it is that way because foreign manufacturers have, for years, chosen to build thier plants in southern states. I have always wondered why this is and thought that there might be motivation on the part of the Japanese to ingratiate themselves, and hence their product, with southerners. The southern states were a hotbed of anti-Japanese automobile sentiment and the Japanese saw the installation of plants and well-paying jobs as a way to not only improve their image in the US but to also improve market share. Southerns could hardly claim, as they had, that the cars were not made in America when the plant was just down the road.

#31774: SocraticGadfly — 07/12  at  01:18 AM
Uhh... Toyota denies education has anything to do with it. Please, let's not perpetuate stereotypes.

In addition, Honda voluntarily weighed in to support Toyota on denying educational problems at Southern plants.

Trackback: But What About the Taxes?? Tracked on: Powerliberal (72.9.234.70) at 2005 07 12 08:03:53
Reading this post at Pharyngula has just knocked all of the stuffing out of my poor little RIGHT WING INTELLECUTAL mind.