Posted on 06/13/2007 4:04:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
Here's a good question for you: Why have public schools at all?
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.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
JenB wrote:
I guess I really don’t understand your point there. What are you trying to say?
REPLY:
My point is that a lot of well meaning people are making snobbish accusations based on assumptions not throughly thought out.
I have lived in countries with bad school systems and believe me they would trade their schools for ours any day of the week.
I would hate to think of where this country would be without public schools.
Comment:
Your original comments about a wasted education reeked with immaturity and elitism.
Ones station in life can change and the story below is an example.
Years ago (late 60’s) many engineers up in Seattle worked for Boeing.
They had good jobs but then one day Boeing shut down it's plants and laid off thousands.
I remember this because many of us military types in Alaska made up care packages for these laid off engineers and their families in Seattle.
The newspapers were full of stories about engineers mowing lawns, washing cars, sacking groceries, selling Avon or any other honest labor to help feed their families.
I am not knocking home schooling just the comments some are using for justification.
I think what happened is that home educators were being told that they couldn't do as good a job as *professional educators*, so they started demonstrating that they could, and then got accused of being arrogant and proud. A lose-lose situation.
So because you think you're right and because you think you have good reasons to support that, you then think you have the right to dictate through the tyranny of the federal government how other people should live because you really know what's best for them even if they don't recognize it themselves.
Where have we seen this kind of thinking before, I wonder?
I believe that India has such a system called a caste.
metmom wrote:
And what does that have to do with homeschooling?
REPLY:
Please read the original post from JenB.
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.
metmom wrote:
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?
Reply:
I did not know that home schoolers were being demonetized by the general population.
I thought the bad vibes came from those with a vested interest in wanting to protect the teachers unions, school administrators, minority one agenda groups, politicians and from self serving elites in the higher education profession.
We’re on the same side. Quit attacking me. Perhaps I speak with more “nuance” because one of my two master’s degrees is in Education, and I’ve consequentially learned some of the ins and outs of the educational process. It was during grad school that I determined that homeschooling should be the “default” method of educating children. I’m a huge advocate of homeschooling. Again, if you’re itching for a fight, fight someone who’s opposed to homeschooling, not me.
Excellent points.
And who might that be? I haven't met anybody that wants that. If you have, you must be hanging out with the wrong crowd. You know, the kind that wants to squash any dissent.
I wasn’t “attacking” you. I was blowing holes in your socialization comment. Attacking you would be along the lines of calling you names, cussing you out, etc.
Not anymore. Read my website. That is what is really going on.
But you also advocate government control of education and curriculum and that is tyranny.
Forcing me to pay money to force kids to learn your world view to the exclusion of all others is tyranny.
Your want your world view exclusively taught but complain when someone else wants their world view exclusively taught. So why is yours the one we have to endure? Why do you get to have it your way and others have to put up with it if they don’t like it, but it doesn’t work the other way around?
Comment:
I don’t know or have any clue as to why some people want to reproduce.
If you have children, did you just set a time to have intercourse, do the job and then said hum now I will take care of the offspring.
Or maybe you just had a vet implant you with sperm like I have done with my cows.
Your assuming that I said that parents did not want to spend time with their children.
Your also assuming that all parents whether single or from a two parent home have the ability or are qualified to home school.
Personally I happen to think home schooling is OK.
In some parts of the country it is the only way a child can get an education.
However, I thank God for these fully subsidized inferior government schools.
It sure beats the alternative of having to deal with uneducated beggars on the streets.
However, I am against some of the elitist, snobbish remarks on this thread by those who choose home schooling as the primary teaching avenue for their children.
I have seen first hand successful home schooling done with children in remote Alaska.
“My suggestion: home educators consider taking on extra kids and home educating them.”
I have often thought along these lines as well. In Texas one can even get a home childcare license fairly reasonably. The parent(s) could then charge for daycare/home schooling.
I have always felt that class room school can easily be a teacher rent space somewhere and hanging a sign. Teach a specific discipline and charge a monthly or semester fee. I think the Teacher would make a lot more. This is how it was done for the most part in Ancient Rome. The teacher would find an open space or even pay for space to teach his pupils in whatever it was he was teaching. Wealthier families would of hired tutors to come to the home.
I beg to differ. :-) Science was always a main topic in our household. At very young ages, my oldest two sons had more knowledge in topics of science than most people acquire through high school and college. Yes, we are nonreligious homeschoolers - an "inter-religious" family that has never found a church where we belong - but I've also known many Christian homeschool families, and they all concentrated heavily on science, too.
Remember, there is far more to science than evolution/natural selection which is more a discussion about the driving force behind everything we know - a question science can't even answer yet.
On the other hand, there is a question science answers without a doubt: That it takes one man and one woman to create a baby. Public schools are teaching evolution, but too many disregard science when the topic turns to biology and reproduction. That's because they have their own religion to push - secular humanism - and politics behind it all.
My four children all attended public schools here in California (as did I). They all are employed. They all pay taxes. They all vote conservative. Way too many parents today leave their children at the doorstep of our public schools and hold the belief that their job in educating their children is over. Parents have to be an integral part of their children’s education and not just give them up to the public schools. Public education, in and of itself, is not the entire problem.
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