It is idiots who allow ideological rhetoric to overcome their good sense. The FACT is that almost all of our military is educated in public schools. The FACT is that public schools provide an excellent education for millions of students. The FACT is most of the problems in them is because parents have tuned out, or should never have had children in the first place having no spouse.
My late wife taught in them but I have not. You cannot find a harder working or more effective teacher than she was. Public schools are run by locally elected officials. One could not get closer to the people.
My public school educated elder son is a Nuke on the USS Ohio and anyone who graduated from Power School like him and his public school educated classmates are living, breathing refutations of that crap too commonly spewed here.
You are rightfully proud of your son, and I'm sure he's a fine young man.
Now, when you've done eight years of sea duty and have an instructor tour under your belt you can presume to tell me that this punk is some sort of rare exception. He's not. I've served with, and attempted to teach, many of his ilk. The only thing that makes him exceptional is the crime he committed.
You would be surprised at the number of dirtbags we filtered out before they could be inflicted upon the fleet, and the number we managed to get rid of after they got there. But you shouldn't be. You can heap all of the blame on bad parenting if you want, but I've seen enough despicable kids come from decent homes to know better.
Kids are woefully unprepared coming out of high school to be anything but full-time college students or professional athletes. They demand to be treated with a respect they've yet to earn. They're conditioned to be spoon-fed information and that there are no consequences for their actions. It seeps out of the public edication system an into basic training and "A" and "C" schools. Heck, I remember having to revise 36 weeks of technical curriculum to remove all gender-specific references and anything else that might hurt someone's feelings (like big words). Technical manuals have to be written to a sixth grade reading level so that kids can understand them.
So get off of your high horse and realize that this idiot kid is a symptom of a much larger problem.