My personal experience is against your position, for what it's worth.
>>> Their paymasters want high-value cogs.
> If what I wrote was drivel, it should be very easy to refute.
You made the claim. You have the burden of proof. Show that either the educational bureaucrats have a "paymaster" that is different from the state bureaucracy, or that the higher-ups in the state bureaucracy want "high-value cogs".
Examples:
- textbooks--topics that haven't changed in centuries--better-covered by texts from generations ago. school system still buys sorry books at $100+ a pop because salesgirl wined-and-dined the right batch of bureaucrats. pearson, mc-graw, et al spend a few thousand, then rake in millions.
- job training--local corp wants more welders/java programmers/truckers, drops some cash on school board members (directly or indirectly), then bibbity-bobbity-boo there's a brand new training center attached to a high school for some thing that I would barely even consider to be education. again, leverage to hell-and-back. tens of thousands in bribes, millions in taxpayer $$$ for free worker training & wage reduction.
- educational software--oh my God. have you even seen some of the shit they waste the kids' time with these days. how does it come about? same story as the rest.
- religion--the motive behind most western art and history, be it protagonist or antagonist. can't talk about it though--massive black hole in any sort of humanities education.
- owned teachers--the front-line infantry, who should be able to offer constructive insights into the process are utterly powerless. too poorly paid to accumulate f-you money, and so terrified of getting kicked out before their pensions vest, they must keep their opinions to themselves and quietly tow the line.
- poor accreditation--by the numbers, education programs at colleges have notoriously low standards. verified by personal experience. we had math teachers who couldn't multiply, and english teachers who couldn't diagram a sentence. thank God for the teacher's edition!
I could go on, and on, and on...
I grant you that, if you are correct, it would explain a lot. It would explain why we spend so much on education for so little result. But, as I asked, do you have evidence of pay?
And "paymaster", to me, doesn't imply just a little cash under the table. It means that they're getting paid something in the neighborhood of their salary, or more. (Maybe that's just how the word strikes me.)
The disconnect is that you are approaching this as someone who is A) spending his own money, and B) not a dummy.
Soaking the taxpayer for "just" a few hundred thousand for a nice steak dinner happens all the time. They're state employees. It's not their money, and it's not like they're going to get fired for it.
edit: EVIDENCE. used to be married to a professor on textbook committee. textbook selection time is always a month of upscale dining. for higher-rent example, look at the epstein/ito/lessig saga at MIT. befriend sales guys at any big company, and they can give you examples from morning to midnight. open your eyes. it is hidden in plain sight.
Went to a public school in California. We learned plenty about religion, of all kinds. We even read parts of the Bible during literature class. Perhaps you should re-examine your assumptions.
We got an excerpt from Ecclesiastes, and snippets about whatever "The Church" was up to in different periods of European history. A very low bar.
