First let me say that I have no complaint with the OP and what Santorum said about schools (other than the lack of a solutions.) Santorum is not my guy, but I will vote for him if he is the nominee.
I ask these questions because I truly don’t know the answers.
Is cyber-schooling different from home schooling? Are you able to access regular school curriculum via the internet for a charge?
Although the Santorums owned a home in PA, their primary residence appears to be VA for several years (job convenience). So why not use the VA school system?
I can understand being overseas and cyber-schooling your child in America.
Berdie, I’m not familiar with ‘cyber-schooling.’ I am familiar with traditional home schooling, and with taking classes online. I don’t know if the Santorum children were plugged into live classes in PA from their house in VA. If that is the case, it’s not an option available in VA. Technology has changed somewhat dramatically since my kids were home-schooled 10+ years ago.
The Santorums could have sent their kids to VA schools had they chosen. Lots of Congressmen and Senators do. But if home-schooling is what the Santorums wanted, and if they consider PA their home, and if this cyber-homeschooling is available through their PA district, why wouldn’t they do that?
Some families, especially very traditional religious families, prefer home-schooling. They don’t want their kids exposed to the ‘culture’ of the public schools. Often the choice has to do with health issues, and certainly the Santorums have had enough of those to deal with. Seems to me parents should be able to decide what’s best for their family and their kids. Even within a family, they might choose to educate one or two at home and send others to the public school, depending on the individual child(ren)’s needs. But it should be the parents’ decision, unless they are unfit parents.
Santorum isn’t my guy, either, but this endless nit-picking on each and every Republican who enters the public arena, especially by other Republicans or conservatives, is getting disgusting.
>>Are you able to access regular school curriculum via the internet for a charge?<<
Better than that: http://www.khanacademy.org
If there were no public school buildings today, no central administrations, and no buses, and a law was passed providing that every child was to be provided a free education:
1) The internet would become an even busier place.
2) The last thing we would do is build huge schools at centralized locations, hire teachers and administrators to put in them, and buy buses to haul every child in the county to that central location, at a tremendous cost.
3) Our tax dollars would go a lot further than they do now, and the Left would have a far more difficult time indoctrinating our youth.
And that’s where we’re headed. Getting there is going to be messy, but productive. It’s interesting that Santorum has decided not to shy away from this issue, because in a lot of places public schools are quite respected, whether they should be or not.