To: mrs. a
If the US public school system is really so fragile that it is threatened by the small minority who homeschool and attend parochial schools, then they need to make some major changes, like, yesterday.Cornered carnivors, and ideologs on their last legs, are most vicious and dangerous. Like Peter Pan's Tinkerbelle, public education will disappear when enough folks simply quit believing in it. As my favorite marxist jesuit put in,
Some fortuitous coincidence will render publicly obvious the structural contradictions between stated purposes and effective results in our major institutions. People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few . . . Like other widely shared insights, this one will have the potential of turning public imagination inside out. Large institutions can quite suddenly lose their respectability, their legitimacy, and their reputation for serving the public good. It happened to the Roman Church in the Reformation, to royalty in the Revolution. The unthinkable became obvious overnight: that people could and would behead their rulers. (Illich's "Tools for Conviviality", p. 111)
19 posted on
12/04/2006 8:59:42 AM PST by
TomSmedley
(Calvinist, optimist, home schooling dad, exuberant husband, technical writer)
To: TomSmedley
Was he a Jesuit ? I've read his book Deschooling Society and quite enjoyed it even tho I knew he was a socialist.
53 posted on
12/06/2006 4:40:43 PM PST by
cinives
(On some planets what I do is considered normal.)
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