[WestVirginiaRebel]

I'm no fan of public schools but child abuse?

It's this kind of nutty rhetoric that makes all Fundamentalist Christians look like the Taliban.

[Wallace T.]

Considering that many of the Founders of this republic were Calvinists, with a theology that would be considered by many as fundamentalist by liberals and non-Christians, your comparison of fundamentalist Christians with the Taliban is ridiculous. I have yet to see Southern and independent Baptists, members of the Churches of Christs or Assemblies of God, Nazarenes, conservative Presbyterians and Lutherans, etc., behead people with dull knives or blow up buildings.

Your nation was mainly founded and settled by evangelical Christians. As a "rebel", perhaps you should also be reminded that Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, etc., were devout Christians. If you find this offensive, perhaps France, Germany, Sweden, or some other more nation more de-Christianized and socialist than America would be preferable for you.

[achilles2000]

The drugging of the children, the mainstreaming of homosexuality and promiscuity, and a host of other things happening in the schools are child abuse. What is presented as "sex education" to children in many schools today would have gotten someone arrested in 1960. This doesn't begin to touch on the problems of the substantially underreportted levels of crime and violence within the schools, which affects students and teachers.

The problem is institutional, and it can't be fixed. The problems are so bad that 40% of new teachers leave within 5 years. Those who stay tend not to have other job prospects or, in a declining number of cases, are tenaciously committed to teaching, even as the institution spins further and further out of control.

[achilles2000]

You seem to be worried about image, but I think it aptly describes a school system in which it appears fully 2/3 of 4th grade students are headed toward illiteracy or functional illiteracy (NAEP results). As bad as that is, the situation is much worse for black and poor students. Then there is the early sexualization of children and the promotion of sexual promiscuity and "lifestyles" that are quite deadly. This doesn't begin to touch on the (largely unreported) level of crime and violence in the schools, the mass drugging of children encpouraged by the schools, particularly boys, the Gramscian Marxism embedded in the curriculum, the fact that a majority of 12th grade students lack even a basic understanding of American history (the NAEP again), etc. What would you call an educational system with these characteristics? It strikes me as child abuse, but you can call it whatever you like.