The contestant was a seventh grade teacher. She couldn't do the fifth grade work. At the end of the show, she had to face the camera and say "My name is Sally Smith and I may teach seventh grade, but I am not smarter than a fifth grader."
Right there, people all across the country should have been getting out of their chairs shouting, "We've got a problem!"
A good portion of the money collected from taxes does not go directly to the students education. A huge chunk goes to administrative jobs. Like the secretary to the assistant vice principal. When I was a kid there wasn’t even an assistant vice principal let alone one with a secretary.
And teachers unions don’t really care about you childs education either. The head of the teachers union in N.J. is paid a half million dollars a year. He doesn’t even teach.
N.J. residents pay more for education than any other State except N.Y. and the test scores are only a fraction above the State that pays the least.
Education has become an insatiable greedy monster.
“Why not provide through the public and the private sector a rich stew of learning systems and allow everyone a government voucher to learn through one of these systems? Is there much doubt that people who choose the most interesting way for themselves to learn will learn more easily and more joyfully? These people might well acquire that priceless gift of a lifelong lust for learning.”
Yet another author who can point to problems with education by govenment , but then reverts to more “hair of the dog” to solve them - vouchers and “accountability” (and “accountability” to whom one might ask?)
The private sector already provides the “rich stew” he is looking for. All that is needed is the complete defunding and dismantlement of the state sector.
So -- how well has that worked?
Why not try a school system with non-union teachers who are really passionate about teaching? Oh wait -- those are charter schools.
GCC Ping!
What we need is an accountable, diverse, market-driven system available to children and to adults of all ages so that we are motivated to learn and to keep learning all our lives. What is the best hope for Social Security entitlement stability? Create a system in which those near retirement can learn to do a job that they love, which allows them to contribute rather than consume, and which keeps them active and healthy.
This sounds like nothing but a lot of market-driven lipstick-on-a-pig double-talk.
How about we try creating a system where those of us near retirement age can actually RETIRE without some market driven libertarian pinhead trying to turn us into "contributors" instead of "consumers".
Darn "market-driven" pseudo-conservatives are no different than the marxist 'rats.
Hand a child one of these with K-12 software preloaded. You'll pay much less than $1,000, and the Great NEA Scam is all over. High-overhead, Prussian-style classroom instruction using existing, state prison-style infrastructure is as dead as buggy-whip manufacturing, it's just still kicking hard enough to hit contribution-hungry politicians in the butt now and again. :)
The primary function of “public education”
now is the rejection of the Christian value system.
I have a relative that has attempted to talk us out of homeschooling with the argument of
“they won’t be exposed to the diversity of ideas that they would be in public school”
to which I reply
“that’s the whole point of homeschooling”
Wrong. People ought to eliminate government entirely from education, starting with ending compulsory schooling.