“Great sarcasm, BobL!”
Thanks Alex. I’m convinced that people on our side still send their kids to public school for the following reasons:
1) It’s what’s always been done. Kid gets to to Age 4 or 5, you enroll him in public school, it’s what happened to them, and their parents, and their grandparents. No reason to question it. It’s what their neighbors do, their coworkers do, etc. Do anything else, and you’re labeled as a freak, if not abusive, for not letting your kid have a ‘normal’ childhood (trust me on this, I know first-hand).
2) It can’t be as bad as they say it is*. And if it is ‘that bad’, I’ll march over there and fix it.
3) Whatever is done in the public schools, can be neutralized by the parents**
4) It’s ‘free’, give me other alternatives that don’t take money out of my pockets, and I’d consider them too. It’s a big day when daycare costs simply disappear, and so that money is immediately budgeted to other uses. Perhaps that’s not the smart thing to do?
I just try to wake them up, get them out of their stupor.
*Tony Snow, like many parents, but one who should have known better, enrolled his daughters in public school, but wound up taking them out, because it was so bad. He convinced me that it’s hopeless when he said something like “Sure, I heard Rush and others say how bad the schools are now, but I thought it was just for ratings. I guess not.”
**One of the Leftists leaders running our schools said something like: “Church gets them 3 hours a week, we get them 35 hours a week, we win.” Same is true for parents...how much time do they REALLY get with their kids? Maybe 10 hours, on a good week. And who says the parents will even know what they have to ‘neutralize’ - I certainly didn’t tell my parents everything I ‘learned’ and did when I went to public school.
I couldn’t have said it better myself! School “teaches” by way of the comprehensive experience that school is. While still in high school I was disabused of the civic myths that surround the schools and couldn’t understand why so many adults were blind as to the practical impact of the schools. If nothing else, they’re a huge chunk of childhood experience that parents know next to nothing about. That should make people uneasy.