Do Away With Public Schools

OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.

he problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run nearly all of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run the vast majority of the schools - particularly when it gets terrible results?

Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil ($12,979) but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar go to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.

In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's teenage kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days ... for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.

A standard response to such criticisms is to say we don't spend enough on public education. But if money were the solution, wouldn't the district, which spends nearly $13,000 on every kid, rank near the top? If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me.

Private, parochial and charter schools get better results. Parents know this. Applications for vouchers in the district dwarf the available supply, and home schooling has exploded.

As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public schools are better at it? The results of the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress history and civics exams showed that two-thirds of U.S. high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.

Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public school model for health care. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means mandating that everyone have health insurance - just as we mandate that all drivers have car insurance - and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks to make sure no one falls through the cracks.

There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such consensus that public schools need to do the educating.

Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary, but then getting out of the way?

Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing services - that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government schools" - but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to people so they can send their kids to school?

What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.

This whole home school argument is just plain out of whack.

Home schooling is great if parents have time to truly spend with their children on a daily basis.

God forbid that we should ever live in a society where what we want to do in life is governed and preconceived for us based upon what our parents have done in their lives.

I believe that India has such a system called a caste.

Personally, I want my children to grow up to be God loving, American patriots who are proud of what ever career they choose.

My father taught me at an early age that there should be a certain amount of pride and self satisfaction in every thing a person does whether it be digging a ditch or controlling a major corporation.

This whole home school argument is just plain out of whack. Home schooling is great if parents have time to truly spend with their children on a daily basis.

I guess I really don't understand your point there. What are you trying to say?

I believe any honest labor is worthy of doing. I just don't think art therapy is honest labor. Or any job you can get with a Wymyn's Studies degree.

The only way I could get on board with a privatization (which in theory I would love to see) is if there was some form of minimum guarantee that... well to be cliche... no child will be left behind.

There can be no guarantees. Who would make them?

Kids are being left behind in droves now. For all the federal involvement and attempts to standardize everything, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Curriculum is geared towards the tests but kids are leaving high school barely literate as it is. Changing things is not likely to make it worse.

It's generally recognized that the implimentation of graded schools in the early 1900's is what started the decline of education. When there were hundreds of little one room school houses, education happened to some sort of standard (McGuffey's) and the teachers were answerable to the community that hired them. And the *system* worked.

There's really no need to fear that education would go off on some wild tangent because schools which wanted to be successful would teach so that colleges would accept their graduates. Market would take care of that.

Tell me where you think Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James and Conrad Dobler (dating myself I know) would likely be without organized sports.

Perhaps leading productive careers doing something else. I really don't know. I do not assume that a life of crime, violence, or ne'er do well status would be their destiny if not for basketball. I believe people are born sinful, not necessarily stupid. If basketball had not filled their lives, perhaps they would have become men of character elsewhere. I'll date myself - I don't know who Conrad Dobler is. :)

My point is that government schools serve as a fortress to protect the rest of us is not necessarily true, and in any case is not a valid performance goal for them in any case.

"There can be no guarantees. Who would make them?"

We do, with the legislation we pass by proxy through those we choose to elect.

"Kids are being left behind in droves now."

And the last thing I want to do is make it worse by allowing a few fringe nut jobs to develop any sort of monopoly in an area where they might... oh I don't know... choose to drop any semblance of science standards and start to teach religious dogma and other quackery.

The danger is in the potential monopoly that can form in less densely populated areas where multiple options are not necessarily profitable.

"It's generally recognized that the implimentation of graded schools in the early 1900's is what started the decline of education."

Are you aware that a large portion (larger then now) or the pre 1900's population was functionally illiterate?

"There's really no need to fear that education would go off on some wild tangent"

Well based on our prior conversations, I suspect that tangent might be led by some we both know.

Home schooling is great if parents have time to truly spend with their children on a daily basis.

Homeschooling works even in single parent situations where the parent works full time. I've seen great success in that situation.

God forbid that we should ever live in a society where what we want to do in life is governed and preconceived for us based upon what our parents have done in their lives.

I believe that India has such a system called a caste.

And what does that have to do with homeschooling?

My father taught me at an early age that there should be a certain amount of pride and self satisfaction in every thing a person does whether it be digging a ditch or controlling a major corporation.

Whatever one does? So when homeschoolers are justifiably proud of the success they've had in educating their children ON THEIR OWN, why are they so demonized?

And the last thing I want to do is make it worse by allowing a few fringe nut jobs to develop any sort of monopoly in an area where they might... oh I don't know... choose to drop any semblance of science standards and start to teach religious dogma and other quackery.

Ah, the old creation/evolution thing. I figured that was what was behind your support of *standardization* of education. I'm constantly amazed, but not surprised, that the frevos always take the liberal big government position on almost every issue and still claim to be conservatives, government control of education and mandatory forced national curriculum are all liberal postitions.

So tell me then. Why do private Christian schools which teach creation out perform the public schools? Why do homeschoolers who are by and large religious and also teach creation along with evolution or even instead of it, outperform the private schools that out perform the public schools?

If schools were allowed to teach what they want, then the stranglehold the evolution/atheist groups have on indoctrinating children into their belief system would be broken and even fewer people would buy evolution. Oh, the horror.

“Home schooling is great if parents have time to truly spend with their children on a daily basis.”

That sort of begs the question as to why the parents choose to reproduce in the first place if they don’t or can’t spend time with their children. Changes in circumstances notwithstanding, why have them if you don’t want to spend the time with them?

I think you also (unintentionally) hit upon one of the Great Myths about home education: that it ultimately requires a parent to pursue it full time. Most home educators report that their kids spend less time in school type activities than their contemporaries in the government schools. And there are a few single parents who manage to both work and home educate.

"I'm constantly amazed, but not surprised, that the frevos always take the liberal big government position on almost every issue..."

"big government position"? Whoo boy, you clearly don't know me.

"Why do private Christian schools which teach creation out perform the public schools?"

Not in science they don't. Science is home schoolings weak link.

To be clear, if it is you and other like minded people who choose to indoctrinate your children in your religion and call it science, that is your prerogative. If your children choose to follow that path, they can work at the one and only creation museum or the one and only research facility in the entire world that supports bible "science".

I'm only concerned about the cases where it is not profitable for an alternative school to set up shop in the same area, resulting in students forced to attend who would otherwise have chosen to go to get a real science education.

But to reiterate, what you choose to do to you and yours is your own business.

A kid can do all they bookwork required for the core courses, Math, English, Science, and Social Studies, in less than two hours a day. That’s a half an hour of uninterrupted time per subject.

Public schools allow 45 mins per class and that includes settling the kids down, classroom discipline (which takes 50-90% of class time according to every teacher I’ve ever talked to), finding pencils, paper, lost assignments, finally teaching the subject material, going over it again for those who weren’t paying attention the first time, giving out homework assignments,....

Homeschooling is far more efficient and is not the time waster that public schools are.

Oh, hogwash! That’s the same BS mantra the public school teacher’s unions put out. They won’t be socialized, blah, blah, blah. In public schools they are socialized alright. To cuss, smoke, do drugs, gangbang, commit crimes, dress like whores or gangsters, screw, look up porn on the library computers ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
A kid being home schooled is going to be as well socialized as his parents will allow to happen. They are allowed to have friends, you know. The results I’ve seen are that they are much more socialized, in a positive sense, than public school kids. They can actually converse intelligently, are comfortable with adults and kids, and know a lot more than their peers in PS.
However, if a parent is a weirdo his kid is going to be a weirdo. Can’t help that.

With gummint moolah go gummint strings. We should have a deal by which the gummint stops taxing us for the despicable gummint skewels and we stop imagining that gummint skewels deliver anything vaguely resembling an actuial education and we stop pretending that our neighbors have any responsibility whatsoever to be forced at gunpoint to pay tribute to the NEA, AFT and PS 666. As to private academies, if we build them, the students will come. We sacrifice family prosperity by my wife teaching at a private academy for a very modest paycheck and for the privilege of passing Catholicism and civilization to a small slice of the next generation. We are not sending our kids to gummint skewels. Yet we must subsidize the lifestyles of the rich and ignorant leftists who do pose as though they were "teaching" in gummint skewels.

If we could go cold turkey on draining our fellow citizens of cash to support gummint skewels which amount to nothing much more than ideological brain laundries and glorified babysitting services, in a generation or so, only the aging geezers (not including this aging geezer or most others at FR) would admit to liberalism at all. Abolishing gummint skewels is, after abolishing abortion, the single most important issue facing conservatives. They are the training camps of our enemies.

“Sorry to have been more ambiguous than I meant to be. Actually, I don’t favor the ‘elitism/winnowing fork’ effect that the option of fully-subsidized inferior government schools facilitates.”

Nor do I. Your post got me to thinking. Some of our fellow posters actually have a point with regard to the, oh how shall I phrase this politely, the pride, of the home education community.

I don’t think it’s wise to dwell on the virtues of home education without having the humility to offer those who are unable to home educate their children some hope. I think there are plenty of folks who due to economics, lack of faith in their own abilities, or any of a myriad of other reasons, would like to home educate their children but simply can’t. And let’s face it, home education IS the road less traveled.

My suggestion: home educators consider taking on extra kids and home educating them. Think about it. If you’re already home educating a couple of your own kids, what prevents you from adding one more from down the street? I mean, home education support groups are already shifting around the work. So why not add a few more kids into the overall mix?

I think doing so would go a long way toward addressing the perception that home educators are elitist snobs. And if we really believe that home education is superior to the government school model, we should consider demonstrating it in situations where the children are not our own.

ndt: If you want to indoctrinate your children that they are descended from apes, feel free.

Who knows, maybe you are right and are offering proof. That's nice of you to concede that parents who raise their children in their respective religions are free to do so. I had thought that issue decided by ratification of the First Amendment and, for good or for ill, its application to the states via the 14th Amendment by SCOTUS.

Whether parents are "allowed" by gummint to raise their children as Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Evangelical, Mormon, Pentecostal, Jewish, pagan or even agnostic or atheist (or most ridiculously of all, but it is their business, in the "church(es)" of Darwinian ape wannabes) is not the issue. The issue is whether you get to steal the money of your fellow citizens who do not share the apewannabe "faith" to provide, in the guise pf gummint skewels, Darwinian training camps funded by those who reject atheism, reject agnosticism and reject watered down forms of other religions designed in the image and likeness of Darwin and his delusions and rejecting the Word and the word of God. I don't want one cent of yours or of others believing as you do. This is supposed to be a free country even for you. Leave me and mine alone, both educationally and financially.

Think about it. If you’re already home educating a couple of your own kids, what prevents you from adding one more from down the street?

In some states, that could be a real legal issue.

However, I do know people who have homeschooled nieces and grandchildren.

In my state, levies are used to take our tax money for public schools. The levy money is part of the property tax collected by the county of one’s residence. The levies are proposed by the local school district with the usual propaganda and lies. After the levy fails, the school district gets to wait a couple of months, and put it up for a vote again. If it fails again, they have to wait for a few months, and put it up again. They never give up, and they never go away. The percentage of yes votes to pass the levy stays the same, but the required number of voters needed to validate the election drops each time it is put up for a vote. In one election, only 19% of the registered voters voted yes, and the damn thing passed. I only found out about the election on the day of the election because I was driving by a polling place and saw the signs. They did a very good job of keeping the election secret.

Perhaps the spelling bee kids are homeschooled BECAUSE they are socially awkward.

I think schools will be challenged until all parents become more involved. I spent quite a bit of time at my sons school before I pulled him out; I always saw the same 3 or 4 mothers there. Many families see their child's school as free daycare.

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