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Aug 5th, 2009

Re: Leaders

kaninelupus said:

Quote ...

Also, the fact that like most democratic nations, voting is compulsory (a fact I know the Yanks find hard to fathom), teaching our students from an early age about how our political system works is given much higher priority, thus creating a much more informed public.

This almost seems as though it might be worth a try, on the grounds of the ends justifying the means - unfortunately, since we don't seem to be able to teach our students how to even add and subtract at the moment, I wouldn't put money on the chance of success in teaching them about something as (relatively) complex as a political system ...

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Aug 5th, 2009

Re: Leaders

Click to Expand / Collapse Quote originally posted by PetuniaRose ...

kaninelupus said:

This almost seems as though it might be worth a try, on the grounds of the ends justifying the means - unfortunately, since we don't seem to be able to teach our students how to even add and subtract at the moment, I wouldn't put money on the chance of success in teaching them about something as (relatively) complex as a political system ...

What causes people to not be able to add and subtract by the time they graduate from high school? That's a hell of a good thread in its own right! My philosophy is "teach it anyway". SOME of them will learn it (am I being too optimistic to think that MOST of them will learn it? Which one's the rule and which one's the exception?).

Last edited by VernonDozier; Aug 5th, 2009 at 9:09 pm.

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Aug 5th, 2009

Re: Leaders

Do you want to start that thread or should I?

And by the way, they can't read or write either. I spend time volunteering - and find myself teaching subtraction with "borrowing", addition with "carrying", and long division with single-digit divisors. Many of the same people can't even begin to solve problems because they can't read well enough to understand the problems. Also, in a related real-world note, they can't make change.

Personal opinion: most of them were never actually TAUGHT. They were "encouraged to discover" - which is NOT equivalent to teaching. One poor young lady told me that the reason that she got A's and B's in math all the way through school was that her teachers knew that she was trying! She is not a stupid person - why didn't any of her teachers actually try to teach her anything??

And yes, I jerked my own kid out of the system after a couple of years and taught him myself. Yes, he ended up in a very good college.

Thanks for providing the soapbox!!

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Aug 5th, 2009

Re: Leaders

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Also, the fact that like most democratic nations, voting is compulsory (a fact I know the Yanks find hard to fathom)

Yes, nearly 100% of the citizens of Iraq voted and Saddam Hussein won 100% of those votes during the "election". But I would not have called that a democracy. Dictatorships are sometime disguised as democracies.

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Aug 5th, 2009

Re: Leaders

Click to Expand / Collapse Quote originally posted by Ancient Dragon ...

Yes, nearly 100% of the citizens of Iraq voted and Saddam Hussein won 100% of those votes during the "election". But I would not have called that a democracy. Dictatorships are sometime disguised as democracies.

But kaninelupus said that in reference to Australia, not a country that whose government enforces single-party rule. The context of that quote makes all the difference...

But I see the point you're trying to make. I know that enforcing voting as mandatory restricts the rights of those who purposefully choose not to vote as an action of disfavour with the current politics. Yet, by not making voting mandatory, a new group is created - those people who don't vote only because they can't be bothered to. Sadly, in countries like America and Canada, this group makes up a large portion of the population, so that the voter turnout can be only ~60% on average. The problem raised by this is that only a slim majority of the country took action in choosing their "representative", and only a majority of those who turned out chose that particular representative over the opposition. This results in very skewed and disproportionate representation, and if the country uses a system like PR, rather than first-past-the-post, much more often the winner of the vote does not actually even hold a majority of the votes from those who voted - an even slimmer portion of the population deciding on the representative of the whole nation.

Last edited by shadwickman; Aug 5th, 2009 at 11:36 pm.

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Aug 6th, 2009

Re: Leaders

Click to Expand / Collapse Quote originally posted by shadwickman ...

But kaninelupus said that in reference to Australia, not a country that whose government enforces single-party rule. The context of that quote makes all the difference...

But I see the point you're trying to make. I know that enforcing voting as mandatory restricts the rights of those who purposefully choose not to vote as an action of disfavour with the current politics. Yet, by not making voting mandatory, a new group is created - those people who don't vote only because they can't be bothered to. Sadly, in countries like America and Canada, this group makes up a large portion of the population, so that the voter turnout can be only ~60% on average. The problem raised by this is that only a slim majority of the country took action in choosing their "representative", and only a majority of those who turned out chose that particular representative over the opposition. This results in very skewed and disproportionate representation, and if the country uses a system like PR, rather than first-past-the-post, much more often the winner of the vote does not actually even hold a majority of the votes from those who voted - an even slimmer portion of the population deciding on the representative of the whole nation.

This is unfortunately true, but it also has another insidious side-effect. Generally speaking, politicians can make use of censuses, polls and records of voting patterns to target those sections of the populous in their "policies" who do vote, and not even pretend to cater for those they know will not even bother to exercise their democratic right to vote. It creates a political institution for the few, not the ALL.

The other advantage we have here is laws which prevent those hefty campaign "contributors" that you have over there, which can create a system of obligation if elected to power.

Last edited by kaninelupus; Aug 6th, 2009 at 6:29 am.

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Aug 6th, 2009

Re: Leaders

shadwickman> The problem raised by this is that only a slim majority of the country took action in choosing their "representative", and only a majority of those who turned out chose that particular representative over the opposition.

There's not problem. Still whoever gets elected to represent us all, was elected by majority. By those that took initiative and by those that didn't; choosing to let others to choose for them. Not a problem at all, letting freedom garnish the way.

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Aug 6th, 2009

Re: Leaders

Let me get some of this straight

:
1) Their is no government with perfect leaders. They often don't represent the
people fairly
2) Their is no government with a non-exploitable system.
3) Lot's of people don't care what to government does, and/or are not
informed.
4) Depending on the system, leaders can use this to give them selves power
over the population.

The Ontario high school curriculum recently got a new mandatory course: Gr. 10 Civics. It was the first smart move I've seen the school board make in a long time. Basicly, it teaches students about government system's, politics, and how to make informed decisions. For example, we had to write an essay on the video I linked on post #13. The hope is to lower the population that does not vote, or blindly votes in the future.

Last edited by Hiroshe; Aug 6th, 2009 at 2:54 pm.

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Aug 6th, 2009

Re: Leaders

Click to Expand / Collapse Quote originally posted by Hiroshe ...

The Ontario high school curriculum recently got a new mandatory course: Gr. 10 Civics. It was the first smart move I've seen the school board make in a long time. Basicly, it teaches students about government system's, politics, and how to make informed decisions.

Sounds good from here. One of our retired Supreme Court justices is trying to start a movement to return to teaching civics in this country - it was taught in 7th and 8th grades when I was a kid, but that was more than 50 yrs ago ...

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Aug 8th, 2009

Re: Leaders

Click to Expand / Collapse Quote originally posted by Aia ...

kaninelupus> "Epic failure"?? Because I could actually construct a well thought out dialogue as to why I disagreed with you??
No. It is because you have removed all possible doubts that you don't know what you are talking about.

In response to above post this is what kaninelupus has to say using the negative rep system>

Quote ...

This coming from someone with the all the IQ of a brick! All you've done with your name-calling and blatant antagonism is show the entire site what a true w@nker you really are... and that's on top of being another annoying Yank (I cheered on 9 11) - kaninelupus

Last edited by Aia; Aug 8th, 2009 at 1:02 am.

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