Yes, but I think you read it wrong.
I was using the argument which educators use. I have heard far too often how parents are not *qualified* to teach because fill in the blank...., as an argument against homeschooling.
I've certainly seen far too often the education establishment take credit for its success. I've seen enough bumper stickers which say *If you (your child) can read this, thank a teacher*.
If they're going to take credit for the success of education, they need to accept responsibility for its failure as well.
If the education establishment worked, it would work without the parents involvement. The fact that the parents are critical to a child's successful education shows that it doesn't do what is claimed, IOW, it doesn't work.
I guess I was putting the emphasis on the wrong phrases in your post, just as someone could do with mine insofar as, by citing Deuteronomy, I am suggesting that it falls [solely] to parents to educate (not so sure I disagree with that, by the way), while seeming to go to bat for public schools.
My original notion for engaging this thread was to bemoan all the hand-wringing we here at FR do over what we all know is an institution that, well, needs to be “institutionalized!” Public education in America today is doing great, great harm to our nation. Period. That said, I am a public school teacher. I go in, in David vs. Goliath fashion and hope to hurl a few stones at the giant’s eyes and maybe encourage a few “Israelites” watching from the sidelines along the way. I know my efforts are feeble as compared to what is called for—and that might be, for me, the greatest source of frustration I have with my conservative brethren.
Given that we know how important ideas are, why aren’t we doing whatever we can in trying to “infiltrate” and overthrow liberalism in this stronghold? Where are the conservative teachers, professors, school board members, principals, superintendents? Where’s the engagement of this enemy? Writing articles and blogs—hurling stones through already broken windows might make one feel better for a time, but these “efforts” are the easier ones to engage in and do little to achieve the desired goals. We’ve been reading recently about how failure to reject amnesty, when it comes to illegal immigration will ensure perpetual electoral defeat, how ignoring this issue will deliver a boat-load of like-minded voters over to the democrats. Well, I say conservatives have already been involved in such voter “shipments by fully ceding the ground of education in America to the liberal mindset, where liberal foundations are being laid every year...generation after generation.
I know the more “nationalized” public education becomes, the more difficult the job will be, but simply bemoaning the failure of public education, sitting on the sidelines while all things liberal continue apace in the “American Schoolhouse of ideas”, and then wondering how our nation’s slide can be prevented is, to me, an example of some pretty bad math (not putting two and two together.)