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Originally Posted by peter12
Seriously, jolinar wiped the floor with you guys.
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If a pile of uncritically and hastily assembled internet garbage that proves nothing about his original point is "wiping the floor"--then I'd hate to see what a "collossal failure" looks like.
The fact is, jolinar lost the argument before I even got involved--because he was talking with someone--bcb--who knew far more about the subject than he did. I probably should have left well enough alone--but I guess I smelled blood in the water a little bit. But I can't take credit for the kill--that was bcb's, and it happened before jolinar's little "meltdown" at the start of this thread.
The fact is, I wasn't even going to bother with a point-by-point attack on jolinar's OP--because he really isn't worth bothering with that kind of effort. He's the type of poster who hides behind the mask of anonymity in order to constantly take needless umbrage and treat every debate like a pole-pissing contest where he can't go to bed until he
"wins." Combined with his exceedingly poor grasp of formal logic and argumentation, the result is at times annoying--but more often risible.
You, on the other hand, are a poster for whom I have a lot more respect, and so since you bring it up, I'll offer my assessment of the argument. Before crediting jolinar with the "win"--let's not forget what the argument was originally
about: vouchers and school choice, which I understand to be a policy plank of the WRA.
This is important, because if you look carefully you'll see that when he started this thread, jolinar moved the goalposts a little closer for himself--what he attempted to prove was now not the value of vouchers, but that "there are flaws in the education system"--which
nobody ever disputed.
So his post then, consists of this "evidence":
1."Post-Secondary Education in Canada: Meeting Our Needs?" This is a policy paper from the Canadian Council on learning. Hilariously, it focuses on
post-secondary education outcomes, making it utterly irrelevant to the point.
Lots of interesting stuff in there, including some "poachable" quotes. Even jolinar's quote actually talks about literacy outcomes among adults, not high school students. I'd say "good try," but... it really wasn't.
2. An editorial article. Interesting, but doesn't rise above the level of anecdote. A good read, though--and could by itself have been an interesting jumping off point if the topic were "learning outcomes in Post-Secondary Education." Let's remember, though, what the topic is: "the failure of Canada's primary education system, and the value of vouchers in fixing it." Note that neither of those has so far been addressed.
3. Now things start getting really funny. An anonymous post in a comment thread? He's making this too easy.
4. The last one is a news article that cites a post-secondary math teacher's opinion on the preparation of students for university math. This is
far and away the best piece of evidence jolinar has--no idea why he buried it at the bottom. It isn't exactly an empirical study of learning outcomes in high school, but it'll do for internet message board purposes. If he'd stopped here, we could probably have had a discussion about it, and it could even have been interesting.
However, he keeps going:
5. A study on adult literacy, which includes people up to age 65. Note the important problem here: many people over 18 who live in Canada didn't go to high school in Canada. Note that none of the authors' "recommendations" have anything to do with school. Again, interesting stuff, and really good work--but not really relevant to THIS discussion per se.
6. Here's where he's just not reading carefully enough. The last piece of evidence is a review article that cites
the same study he just linked above. Even this article recommends nothing about schools--certainly it doesn't claim that vouchers are a good idea. Instead, the author puts the onus on families, which I think is pretty smart.
The rest of jolinar's rant I won't address--including the personal attacks on me--except to say that this:
Quote:
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You knew what I meant when I said teachers (meaning primary and secondary) and you knew what I meant when I said educators (PSE). Yet instead of having a debate you try and pick a fight about semantics.
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has to be the weakest backpedal I've ever seen. I was supposed to assume that "educators" implied post-secondary? I'm sorry, but that's just nonsense. If anything "educators" implies primary school teachers, which is how I read it.
The rest amounts to jolinar trying to shift the onus onto me to prove that his claims of fact are wrong--and you and I both know that isn't how it works. If you make a claim, you back it up. It's not unreasonable or rude to expect people to do that. I didn't claim that Canada's primary education system was perfect; as far as I know, nobody did. Merely that vouchers are at best an unproven and at worst a dangerous idea, based on alarmism about an educational system that really isn't all that bad.
To sum up: jolinar moved the goalposts back far enough that he would no longer be required to supply evidence to support vouchers. Instead he tried to find flaws in the educational system as it exists, a far easier task. But he even failed at that, providing exactly
one relevant piece of evidence in six links, and not one that proves very much by itself.
If that's "wiping the floor".....
