Posted on 09/29/2010 10:28:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Barack Obama said on NBC on Monday he would like American children to spend more time in public schools. Here is a better idea: American children should spend no time in public schools.
County by county, state by state, Americans should begin functionally abolishing government-run schools and replacing them with a free market in schools. On the federal level, Congress should kill the Department of Education by choking off its funding. The department was not constitutional in the first place.
Everybody's children should get the same chance Obama's children have had to attend the private school of their parents' choice.
American children should have the opportunity not only to attend schools where they are well instructed in reading, writing and arithmetic, but also where they are unambiguously taught that our Declaration of Independence is right -- that God is the Author of our rights and that even the government must obey His laws.
We should aim for a society where children spend more time with their most important teachers, their parents, and less time with the less important teachers at their school.
Obama wants the opposite. And he does not want our children spending more time with just any teachers, but with government teachers -- who often double as liberal propagandists seeking to indoctrinate children with values contrary to those they learn at home, while failing to teach them reading, writing and arithmetic.
"I think we should have a longer school year," Obama said on NBC. "We now have our kids go to school about a month less than most other advanced countries. And that makes a difference. It means that kids are losing a lot of what they learn during the summer."
Obama then made a class-war argument to defend his point -- in the process taking a snotty swipe at what he presumes to be the inferior reading habits of lower-income families.
"It's especially severe for poorer kids who may not be seeing as many books in their house during the summers, aren't getting supplemental educational activities," Obama said. "So, the idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense."
In keeping with his Marxist analysis, Obama pointed to the education system in the People's Republic of China -- a nation governed by the Communist Party -- as a model for the United States to emulate when it comes to dealing with teachers.
"When I travel to China, for example," said Obama, "and I sit down with the mayor of Shanghai, and he talks about the fact that teaching is considered one of the most prestigious jobs and a teacher's getting paid the same as an engineer, that, I think, accounts for how well they're doing in terms of boosting their education system."
Obama's unstated assumption: Central planners, not the free market, ought to determine the value of a particular job and who gets paid what.
I say: Let the market decide -- especially in education.
The greatest problem with primary and secondary education in America today is precisely that it is dominated by government-run schools that people are compelled by force of law to pay for whether they like them or not and whether they send their children there or not. The second greatest problem is that the political power controlling these government-run schools has become increasingly centralized, gradually removing decision-making from local communities, passing it up to the state and federal level.
On NBC, Obama made clear he wants to use increased federal education spending to increase federal leverage over local schools, forcing policy changes preferred by him. That would move power in exactly the wrong direction.
The historical record compiled by the Department of Education itself shows that increased government spending on education does not improve the academic performance of government schools.
"From 1989-90 to 2006-07, total expenditures per student in public elementary and secondary schools rose from $8,748 to $11,839 (a 35 percent increase in 2008-09 constant dollars), with most of the increase occurring after 1997-98," says the Education Department's The Condition of Education 2010.
In 1980, 17-year-old students in public schools earned an average score of 284 out of 500 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. In 2008, they still scored 284. Despite increased per pupil spending, the needle did not move.
In 1999, 17-year-old students in American public schools earned an average score of 307 out of 500 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math test. In 2008, they scored 305. The needle moved in the wrong direction.
Every community in America should give all parents a voucher equal to what it now pays per-pupil for its public schools, allowing those parents to use those vouchers at any school they choose. Let the market decide if government-run schools survive.
Ping
GMTA....
I should have checked first....
I’ve been saying this for roughly five years and was hinting at it for the five years before that. The Public school system did what it needed to do. It was right for its time. That time passed around the end of the last century. When I watched a movie about five years ago where a mother told her son to “GOOGLE it”, that was when I knew that schools were a complete waste of our money.
Sure, without public schools parent involvement would determine the quality of education a child gets. But when was that NOT true? We could give a computer and a basic curriculum to every family with school aged children (even one per child) along with free high speed internet access and those with even somewhat involved parents would get a better education than most get now.
The real strength of this would be the kids would get none of the negative social involvement that most schools have in spades. Families could take responsibility for and manage their kids social paths. e.g. no more drugs and sex in the school parking lot or having to deal with bullies while teachers turn away.
It’s time to let public schools retire gracefully and not outlive their welcome like so many movie star has-beens.
It seems to be a common theme with the left -
they use the government to FORCE those who don’t agree with them to pay to advance the left’s agenda.
The NEA is paying half the transportation costs for teachers to attend an Obama rally this weekend.
No kidding. We home-school, and cover all of the required curriculum for our 8 yr old in about 1-1/2 hrs/day. The rest of the time is practical application.
I think it was William Bennett who said that if a foreign country came here and put in place the kind of education system we have now in the U.S., we’d rightly consider it an act of war.
“Obama doesn’t think private enterprise works at anything.”
I guess he thinks all that money private enterprise gave him came from some money tree, and he should have that tree.
Leave it to the local communities to fund and manage their own districts.”
Right on!!
The school I attended, along with my 3 brothers, was run by the local farmers & parents. Going to the annual school board meeting was a big deal & no one missed the event- even the parents whose kids were grown & out of that school.
Why? because those persons were also business owners who would be hiring us in the future. They had a stake in our getting a good basic education for our emploument skills.
Today- school boards are manned by ‘former teachers’ who pander to the ‘teachers’ & the unions.
There is basically no accountability.
It is a game of musical chairs & none of them are ever on the hot seat.
They turn out ignorant kids who are unemployable & who have been told all their lives how ‘special’ they are.
Hasn’t the failed experiment of government schooling already proven that government isn’t capable of teaching?
The definition of insanity is what again?
The government at all levels should get out of the edumakashun bidness. They do an utterly rotten job and we cannot afford to have more generations of kids propagandized at taxpayer expense. Take gummint out of the equation and there will be no more 14th amendment lawsuits trying to force acceptance of lavender homecoming “queens.” The kids will no longer be relentlessly bombarded with “green” (Marxist) propaganda. It is not just because of the federales that these problems occur. There are plenty of hard-core leftists involved on a local level as well. Give people the opportunity to pay to private schools as many of their own gummint skewel tax dollars as they choose and that will be a big headstart toward curing the gummint skewel problem.
Does anyone know of a resource that spells out actually how much we spend on public schooling, either per capita or or per student if it was averaged out amongst all schools? Including what the schools get from local, state and national taxes as well as foundations, etc?
Could that have been A.C.E.? Accerlerated Christain Education. They have a very successful program for Christian schools and home schooling, and are based somewhere just north of Dallas.
Yes. It was A.C.E.
Thank you for the memory jog. :-))
Yes. It was A.C.E.
Thank you for the memory jog. :-))
I am not a teacher but have friends and family who are and I am sick of listening to the tired line that insists our problem is the teachers and administration in the schools. Rather than closing down public schools, allow them to expel the students who are problem. Schools are FORCED to keep kids who have no desire to learn but a big desire to create havoc in the classroom - making it nearly impossible to teach those who want to learn. Take the problem children in DC and force the same school that Obama’s girls attend to accept these students and let’s see how successful that school is.
More often than not, the schools are taking the rap for societal problems created by idiots like Obama who then removes himself and his family from the results of his legislation and those like him.
Try to think out side the box.
Imagine a system where the only restaurants were primarily controlled by the government, employed a unionized government workforce and provided food that was nominally free? Just how good do you think the food would be?
Oh, those hoodlum kids you describe are largely the product of another government program - welfare.
Every community in America should give all parents a voucher equal to what it now pays per-pupil for its public schools, allowing those parents to use those vouchers at any school they choose. Let the market decide if government-run schools survive.
If we're serious about the free market deciding, we shouldn't even have a voucher program. Everyone would do what homeschoolers and private schoolers are doing now - they'd pay for it on their own. More churches would set up schools. Cooperatives would flourish. We would have many more choices in education than we have now.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.