But it does because people assume that every one of the the 2.3 million Americans in prison today are uneducated thugs. It's not a comforting prospect to think of them as our peers, or worse yet, having been in a better position than us before their incarceration.
Well sure, but I would assume that the Harvard debate team is also full of geniuses.. or at the very least, wealthy people with all the resources and access to top tier mentoring and coaching.
>The three inmates, Carl Snyder, Dyjuan Tatro and Carlos Polanco, were tasked with arguing that public schools should be allowed to turn away students whose parents entered the US illegally.
>The inmates impressed the judges by suggesting that if public schools turned the students away, non-governmental organisations or wealthier schools could step in and provide better education to the children in any case.
That's a weak argument, in my view.
The illegal immigrants wouldn't be able to afford private education as it is too expensive even for Americans. Non-gov orgs wouldn't be able to reach to illegal immigrants. Home- and Internet-schooling would be better arguments, but still bad.
Integrating the children of illegal immigrants into public schooling would bring greater benefits not only to them and their parents but to society as a whole.
One can argue that, in the US, European cultural values predominate ("white" is not a synonym for the Caucasian ethnicity but simply an identity that means "holds European cultural values"), and that African-Americans don't have significantly different cultural values from European culture, (ie, they are "white" save for superficial differences like music, food and places of worship, and so on), and that a Syrian Caucasian is not "white" (because they don't hold European cultural values) but an African-American descendant of the people from the Sahara region is a dark-skinned "white".
And therefore African-Americans being dark-skinned "whites" (even if they try to superficially distinguish themselves with the US "black" cultural identity) is an example of the power of assimilation of our public schooling. It would convert, say, a child of Syrian parents with Middle-Eastern values into someone who holds European cultural values and who would work, or rebel, within the cultural rules of the European system.
The children of illegal immigrants should be allowed into public schools not just to neutralize the threat of cultural invaders, but to give us more soft power over a wider portion of the world.
Definitely, but from all I've seen of debate competition, the strength of argument is largely irrelevant. How many points did you make, how many were responded to, how many of the opponent's did you respond to...you might not get credit for a completely off-the-wall response, but if you pass a basic sanity check, I think you're good.
I could be wrong, but this seems to match, what I've been told, what I've seen, and what seems measurable (and balanced when you're assigned your position).
I would say it is counterproductive to base your re-education camp argument around loaded terms like white/black-american culture.
> ;)
But you know that.
Nobody uses "white" the way you did and even if that matches your observations in the US that term was only very recently inclusive of so many origin countries on the European continent. The UK version of "white" still isn't nearly as inclusive as the American construct. It is fine to merely say American culture has predominantly European roots.
The underlying argument around re-education camps may have more merit. The primary argument is about who pays for it. You need to convince Congress and education secretaries and I don't think you're soft power argument would sway anyone.
I largely agree with the argument out of doing it for assimilation and soft power reasons, however --
In general, poor people don't pay private schools the full amount, and private schools even set their budgets such that they expect to be subsidizing X% of the students at the bottom from Y% at the top, adjusting their tuition up and then discounting it for some or even most students.
You can't directly charge rich people more, but it turns out they'll look the other way if you charge everyone else less because they're poor.
I think you underestimate the type of "spin" (for lack of better term) that goes on in the street? At least here in the Bronx, some of these people find ingenious arguments to get out of situations. Who is going to be better than understanding argument and the law, than someone who personally went through the process?
These people find ingenious short-term "quick-fix" arguments, a lot of that advantage can go away in the long term.
This comment is so bad that it has to be satire. You can't really string that many cliches together while simultaneously claiming to have an outside view of "group think" and be sincere ... can you?
[+] [-] hackits|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sogen|8 years ago|reply
and this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/10/07/harvar...
[+] [-] greygatch|8 years ago|reply
Smells like bullshit to me.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|8 years ago|reply
http://www.radiolab.org/story/debatable/
[+] [-] smhost|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacobolus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2_listerine_pls|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tmp777889|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oliwarner|8 years ago|reply
But it does because people assume that every one of the the 2.3 million Americans in prison today are uneducated thugs. It's not a comforting prospect to think of them as our peers, or worse yet, having been in a better position than us before their incarceration.
[+] [-] CamelCaseName|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superflit|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sigi45|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aenyn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jhiska|8 years ago|reply
>The inmates impressed the judges by suggesting that if public schools turned the students away, non-governmental organisations or wealthier schools could step in and provide better education to the children in any case.
That's a weak argument, in my view.
The illegal immigrants wouldn't be able to afford private education as it is too expensive even for Americans. Non-gov orgs wouldn't be able to reach to illegal immigrants. Home- and Internet-schooling would be better arguments, but still bad.
Integrating the children of illegal immigrants into public schooling would bring greater benefits not only to them and their parents but to society as a whole.
One can argue that, in the US, European cultural values predominate ("white" is not a synonym for the Caucasian ethnicity but simply an identity that means "holds European cultural values"), and that African-Americans don't have significantly different cultural values from European culture, (ie, they are "white" save for superficial differences like music, food and places of worship, and so on), and that a Syrian Caucasian is not "white" (because they don't hold European cultural values) but an African-American descendant of the people from the Sahara region is a dark-skinned "white".
And therefore African-Americans being dark-skinned "whites" (even if they try to superficially distinguish themselves with the US "black" cultural identity) is an example of the power of assimilation of our public schooling. It would convert, say, a child of Syrian parents with Middle-Eastern values into someone who holds European cultural values and who would work, or rebel, within the cultural rules of the European system.
The children of illegal immigrants should be allowed into public schools not just to neutralize the threat of cultural invaders, but to give us more soft power over a wider portion of the world.
Discuss? ;)
[+] [-] lkbm|8 years ago|reply
Definitely, but from all I've seen of debate competition, the strength of argument is largely irrelevant. How many points did you make, how many were responded to, how many of the opponent's did you respond to...you might not get credit for a completely off-the-wall response, but if you pass a basic sanity check, I think you're good.
I could be wrong, but this seems to match, what I've been told, what I've seen, and what seems measurable (and balanced when you're assigned your position).
[+] [-] ringaroundthetx|8 years ago|reply
> ;)
But you know that.
Nobody uses "white" the way you did and even if that matches your observations in the US that term was only very recently inclusive of so many origin countries on the European continent. The UK version of "white" still isn't nearly as inclusive as the American construct. It is fine to merely say American culture has predominantly European roots.
The underlying argument around re-education camps may have more merit. The primary argument is about who pays for it. You need to convince Congress and education secretaries and I don't think you're soft power argument would sway anyone.
[+] [-] SomeStupidPoint|8 years ago|reply
In general, poor people don't pay private schools the full amount, and private schools even set their budgets such that they expect to be subsidizing X% of the students at the bottom from Y% at the top, adjusting their tuition up and then discounting it for some or even most students.
You can't directly charge rich people more, but it turns out they'll look the other way if you charge everyone else less because they're poor.
[+] [-] sangnoir|8 years ago|reply
I think you are going out of your way to intentionally start a flame-war barely related to the original article.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mrcactu5|8 years ago|reply
These people find ingenious short-term "quick-fix" arguments, a lot of that advantage can go away in the long term.
[+] [-] trisimix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ratsimihah|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rweba|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StanislavPetrov|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sctb|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] trisimix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aj7|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esaym|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drawnwren|8 years ago|reply