Parents have a duty/ responsibility to insure that the next generation has an education. As I have said for many home schools, private education, vouchers, etc... are not an option.
If you are good at what you do, consider going to private schools to teach.
Very few (if any) Private schools offer the Technology courses I teach, and none in the area I live.
Sorry it has taken me a while to respond but I am busy neck-deep in indirect statement an adj/noun agreement with 3rd declension nouns and 1-2nd declension adjectives.
So, since I was mentioned, I thought to respond.
It is true that the progenitor of this thread has told many of us in not so many words how we are all destined for hell and are not conservative but marxist and useful idiots.
Recently, the vitriol has increased because rather than focus on the issues, as I have tried to do and provide empirical evidence, the progenitor ignores those of us who teach.
I have considered a private school to work at but frankly, the children are typically worse than the students I currently have - based on my personal observations. The last private school we had in our county closed in 1991 because there were better educational opportunities in the local public school, chiefly in science and non-academic elective choices.
BlackElk - I read your cogent and thoughtful replies regularly and appreciate your insights and comments. I would love to share ideas with your wife for my Latin classes since we are a tightly-knit bunch.:)
We few who speak for our jobs and most importantly our children we reach do get passionate about our work and what we do; this is why I go to work Monday - Friday. If I take offense because I am trying to make my community better by getting children to see past living on the street and am condemned for it, I do not see how I cannot be offended.
I have about left FR because there is no support for conservative teachers. I know my loss will not hurt FR or those who feel I am doing ill to children, but I know what good I do for those who need it.
I do not expect a medal or a triumphal like Caesar, but when a kid gets it or praises me independently of my class, it is worth quite a bit to me personally.
Personally, I am skeptical about vouchers because, the money will inevitably have "strings attached." I would not send my kids to the local Catholic High School because I was not convinced that it is REALLY Catholic. No one can reasonably say that private schools are ALL blessed with academic excellence. Nor can anyone say that ALL public schools are devoid of excellence. My late mother-in-law graduated an elite public high school (Stuyvesant?) in New York City and went on to matriculate at and graduate from Sarah Lawrence. For most of her life, she was a socialist and actually worked for Norman Thomas but that was never attributable to her public high school education.
It may not occur to those private schools to offer those Technology courses because many are concentrating on courses in the classics or the Trivium and the Quadrivium. Maybe they would if you suggested it and gave the school an explanation of the value of the course to the students.
I attend a very Traditional Catholic Church in Rockford (Tridentine Mass and everything else). Parishioners include retirees and young families and everything in between united by a love of traditional Catholic Faith. The school at which my wife teaches originated through the efforts of parishioners at that Church. Although we are very much in communion with the Rockford Diocese and with the Vatican, the school is not sponsored by the diocese nor subsidized in any way by the Church. Within the limits of the meaning of "Catholic," the school is free from interference.
Voluntarily, the school is "credentialed" by various well-recognized private school groups and has won the Henry Salvatori award from Hillsdale College for the quality of the education offered by our K-12. Several alumni/ae have attended/graduated Hillsdale. This year, one graduate looks likely to be admitted by Harvard.
Meanwhile, as I type, two of our parishioners are working on a project to create a very Catholic College which would require students to successfully complete courses in theology, philosophy and some liberal arts but would concentrate on giving a first rate education in various practical trades (electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, sheet metal, heating and air conditioning, and whatever). Maybe it will happen. Maybe not. If it does, you can bet that it will be a lot more reasonable and modest in what it charges students than most folks are used to now and that the emphasis will be on education and not on bureaucratic approval.
There are many exiting things happening in private or home school or internet education which were unheard of and probably not yet widely imagined when I and later my wife were in school at any level. We find ourselves along with many other folks having to create education in our country all over again.
Our Catholic colleges and universities which were developed with the financial blood sacrifice of many devout colleges, have largely been stolen from the Faithful Catholics by such disgraces and phonies and leftist enemies of all things Catholic like Frs. Hesburgh, Malloy and Jenkins at what is now Notre Shame University,
When Obozo was invited there to speak at commencement a few years ago and Notre Shame caused the arrest of Catholic priests and others for protesting on the campus, my bishop who was serving on the Church's Signatura (its Vatican supreme court) denounced Notre Shame, called it no longer Catholic and invited Notre Shame to change its name to Northern Indiana Secular Humanist University as a matter of "truth in advertising" and urged Catholic parents NOT to allow their children to attend Notre Shame. Each and every presiding Catholic bishop in Illinois also condemned Notre Shame for inviting Obozo and giving him an honorary degree.
Slowly, painstakingly slowly, this generation of Catholics are developing new colleges and universities to replace the formerly Catholic and now apostate colleges and universities like Notre Shame, Georgetown, Fordham, Boston College and almost all the rest of the old schools that have effectively abandoned Catholicism at the Land of Lakes Conference run by Hesburgh in 1967 in Wisconsin. After that conference, there were only six Catholic colleges and universities that had not apostasized, among them St. John's in NYC, Grenier in Erie, PA, and Belmont Abbey in North Carolina.
We feel, if anything, more strongly that places like Notre Shame and Boston College, Georgetown and the rest of those which apostasized in 1967 should shape up or be abolished than we feel about public education. At least the public schools do not claim, do not perpetrate mail fraud, do not defraud Catholic contributors and parents by CLAIMING falsely to be Catholic. May tumbling tumbleweed be the sole occupant of an abandoned Notre Shame.
Among the newer and actually Catholic colleges and universities created are Christendom in Virginia, St. Thomas More in New Hampshire, St. Thomas More in Fort Worth, Texas and Wyoming Catholic College.
Brick and mortar colleges are beginning their death throes given the legalized extortion of what they charge for tuition, room and board or even just tuition.
Our educational ideas are not for everyone in our damaged society and civilization but they are definitely an option.
The cost of educating a student K-12 is less than $4,000 per year. Businessmen who depend on schools of whatever kind to educate their future employees might wisely develop a relationship with good private schools and their students, meet the students, experience classes, attend graduation exercises, choir concerts, etc. The school building is a former junior high school purchased at bargain price from the public school district which wanted to get rid of it. Not a palace but adequate to the purpose.
What technology courses do you teach?