Is Public Education Necessary?

Of course, I have again failed to keep in mind the good guys like Softball Mom in Viginia who struggle within the government school system to produce quality results against all odds.

Indeed, there are many dedicated teachers - and administrators - working in the public school system. That's the only reason we're not failing completely.

Education. Have you ever considered how it SHOULD work? Consider... what's more important than the education of our kids? Okay, their health, but other than that? Outside of keeping them healthy and well fed getting our kids a proper education is perhaps the most important duties of a parent in life.

Yet what do most, almost all, parents do? We send our kids to public schools, which means that we send our kids to the school nearest our home. Because that's how the system works.

But it shouldn't be this way at all, and it wouldn't be in a rational world. When we decide to have children - and it should be a conscious decision - we should already have a plan in mind for their education. As it comes time to send them to school - after we've prepared them as parents by teaching them at home as best we can - we should research the market to find the best school we can afford. And yes, we should have thought about the cost of education before we had the child.

But that's not what we do - not at all. We simply send the kid to the public school in the neighborhood. We don't even spend as much time researching schools as we do researching big screen TVs.

Nope, we send 'em off to the public school in our neighborhood, where they're lucky if they have a dedicated teacher as opposed to somebody just putting in their time. And there are PLENTY of those kind of teachers, just putting in their time, because there is NO competition AT ALL to public schools. And it's pretty much of a direct correlation that the worse the neighborhood that we live in, the worse the school (and education) our kid is going to get.

You want a reason why our democratic republic is in the shape it's in? You want to know why people put up with a federal government that's smothering the life out of us?

Because our public schools have failed to educate our kids.

Thomas Jefferson and others thought public schools were a necessity to maintaining the educated populace necessary to preserve freedom. Jefferson was a thoughtful man, a great thinker, and he's one of my heroes. But he was wrong about this.

With vouchers you seize money from the public and cut a check to select individuals, with public schools you seize money from the public and use it to pay for a resource that only select individuals will access.

Which is why, at post 20, I more or less suggested that the public only spend for public libraries (books, staff, facilities), which are available to all.

AFAIK, Virginia doesn't have any unions in public education, ...

Teachers Union Facts - Virginia

The AFT and NEA, and all of their state and local affiliates are eaten slam up with corruption.

Ok, I didn’t notice that suggestion. IMO that approach is much more tolerable than maintaining public schools.