While some want a separation of church and state, some stand in firm opposition to any attempts to separate school and state.
Indoctrination serves an agenda.
The government is good at collecting money (under the threat of punishment) but not so good at seeing it put to efficient use. As taxpayers, they are accountable to us and must fall under our oversight.
BTTT
All public schools should be closed, and all school districts should go to a voucher system for the full amount being spent per student. Then just sit back and watch all the tiny private schools pop up.
Performance could be ensured by requiring some very basic testing in reading and math only, with no political or religious stuff in it, and requiring achievement equal to the current average of public schools for each grade level. The school or home teacher gets the payment AFTER the student(s) pass the test.
It wouldn't set a very high standard, but it would set a higher standard than half of public school students currently achieve, and eliminate the problem of payments to schools and home teaching parents that aren't teaching anything at all, while keeping government meddling in curriculum to an absolute minimum, and government meddling in dress and behavior standards, schedules, choice of who to admit, etc., to zero.
I believe thatLeftists have nearly destroyed the words "public" and "society" by using them as euphemisms for "government.' Accordingly it is necessary to consider whether the intended meaning is anything other than "government" when you encounter them.publicgovernment schools have a right to exist insofar as they express a shared public view of education. A consensus on education, at least at the level of each state and arguably of the nation, gives schools the right to call themselves public and be supported by the public. Oncepublicgovernment schools stop speaking for the whole community, they are no different from private schools. It's notpublicgovernment schools' incompetence that have wrecked them.
ping
later, Gelernter
Dear Editor,
By all accounts and from every view, the Philadelphia school system is beyond broken. If the school system was a business, it would have gone bankrupt, had its assets sold off and been forgotten long ago. If it was an army, it would have surrendered and would still be interned in POW camps. If it was a car, not only would nothing happen when you put the key in the ignition, it would also periodically leak oil, gasoline and catch on fire for no apparent reason. If a devoted group of maniacal public servants 40 years ago had decided that they would wreck the Philadelphia public schools and, everyday without rest until today, had put all their energies into that one purpose, they could have hardly done better than the mess we have today.
One of the principal reasons we have this mess is that we allowed public schooling to become a very profitable monopoly enforced by the police power of the state. The worse the public schools do in educating our children the more money it attracts. There are no penalties for poor performance and no benefits for excellent performance. Those in power reap huge monetary benefits from those in the employment of the public schools and thus are unwilling to even tinker with it. It is a one hell of a system.
There are 176 out of 264 schools on the failing list in Philadelphia when spending per pupil is over $7500 per year. Nearly 63% of black fourth-graders are unable to read proficiently. They are doomed to a life of low wages and low expectations. Yet the NAACP, the teacher's union and the mayor's office see nothing wrong with the status quo. As a comparison, Catholic school spending per pupil is $3500 per year with much better results.
It is time to get government completely out of public education. They should have not one string or tentacle left to grow on the public school system. Parents know what is best for their children and would have left this madness long ago if they had the choice. Parents would not tolerate failure and would seek excellence in their children's school if they had the choice. Parents would not put up with waste, incompetence and fraud in their children's education if they had the choice. If they only had the choice...
By 2banana
Later