Bessner's wrong on school funding for four reasons:
1. Federalizing all school funding will diminish local power over their own schools. Schools, unions, and boards will have less incentive to listen to parents. They'll only need to satisfy party bosses to ensure they get proper cash flow. This is human nature (even if Bessner refuses to believe human nature is real or knowable).
2. School quality will suffer everywhere. As is the case with essentially everything run from the federal level. Again, it's human nature: things managed from afar are managed worse.
3. Educated parents will still find ways to give their kids a leg up whenever possible. Unless you're gonna outlaw tutors, extra schooling, private schools, parents helping kids with homework, and educated parents teaching kids passively through daily life, then you're never gonna get everyone on equal footing. It's a fool's errand. This is common knowledge to people who understand human nature.
4. Lastly, he ignores that school funding is actually not so disparate as it might first appear. I live in the DC/Balt area, and those two school districts are among the very highest in the country, and have some of the worst outcomes. The problem here is not lack of money. It's systemic. It's the way the money's (mis)spent, but more importantly, it's the fact that too many of the kids in those two cities grow up not valuing education, and grow up in homes where they get no support. Federal funding isn't going to fix those problems. In fact, both places enjoy heavy federal subsidies as it is. It hasn't made them better, and has likely made them worse.
Bessner may reject human nature, but this is exactly the problem with so much leftist thought: claiming the ability to change things deeply imbedded in our psychology and biology while ignoring the hard work that needs to be done by people, families, and communities to improve themselves.
these are excellent points. I'd also double down on your last point especially about Dr Bessner's rejection of human nature. He even defends this as virtuous, saying something along the lines of "we cant claim to know human nature, nobody knows human psychology"
This is a bit weak if a claim given (1) human and animal psychology is a much tighter, more falsifiable discipline than history, and (2) Dr Bessner spent most of this discussion claiming to know the motivations of "neolibs" and americans and all world leaders. I guess no one knows human nature except Dr Bessner
Bessner's wrong on school funding for four reasons:
1. Federalizing all school funding will diminish local power over their own schools. Schools, unions, and boards will have less incentive to listen to parents. They'll only need to satisfy party bosses to ensure they get proper cash flow. This is human nature (even if Bessner refuses to believe human nature is real or knowable).
2. School quality will suffer everywhere. As is the case with essentially everything run from the federal level. Again, it's human nature: things managed from afar are managed worse.
3. Educated parents will still find ways to give their kids a leg up whenever possible. Unless you're gonna outlaw tutors, extra schooling, private schools, parents helping kids with homework, and educated parents teaching kids passively through daily life, then you're never gonna get everyone on equal footing. It's a fool's errand. This is common knowledge to people who understand human nature.
4. Lastly, he ignores that school funding is actually not so disparate as it might first appear. I live in the DC/Balt area, and those two school districts are among the very highest in the country, and have some of the worst outcomes. The problem here is not lack of money. It's systemic. It's the way the money's (mis)spent, but more importantly, it's the fact that too many of the kids in those two cities grow up not valuing education, and grow up in homes where they get no support. Federal funding isn't going to fix those problems. In fact, both places enjoy heavy federal subsidies as it is. It hasn't made them better, and has likely made them worse.
Bessner may reject human nature, but this is exactly the problem with so much leftist thought: claiming the ability to change things deeply imbedded in our psychology and biology while ignoring the hard work that needs to be done by people, families, and communities to improve themselves.
these are excellent points. I'd also double down on your last point especially about Dr Bessner's rejection of human nature. He even defends this as virtuous, saying something along the lines of "we cant claim to know human nature, nobody knows human psychology"
This is a bit weak if a claim given (1) human and animal psychology is a much tighter, more falsifiable discipline than history, and (2) Dr Bessner spent most of this discussion claiming to know the motivations of "neolibs" and americans and all world leaders. I guess no one knows human nature except Dr Bessner