With the advent of the Internet Public Education is doomed! Once some enterprising young teacher or businessperson figures out you can get an entire year's curriculum to a student for $99.95 via e-mail and provide instruction and testing, the Government Public Education Monopoly will fold faster than a house of cards!
Government Public Education Monopoly will fold faster than a house of cards! Two groups (but not all of these groups) will still be left: the idiot middle-class liberal's kids and the ignorant poor folk's kids.
The former's parents ignore their children or live vicariously through them. They will keep sending their kids to public schools because they mindlessly follow whatever the government tells them to do, and they *certainly* don't want to be bothered having to actually raise their kids themselves. That's what the government is *for*, after all. (To them.)
The latter usually don't have direct access to the internet, are too busy slaving away at crappy jobs to devote the time necessary, and, out of ignorance to what is being done to their kids, wont see the importance of pulling their kids out of school. Finally, as many of them don't have a lot of education, it may be hard for them to teach their children anything...even though, if they believed in themselves, I think they could both learn and teach their kids a great deal, more than they think they can.
Tuor
People are doing that already. I read an article where public school teachers are so busy preparing their students for high-stakes tests that they really don't have time to use the internet in class. So much for Pres. Clinton's plan to wire every school to the internet. Public schools will eventually be kicked to the curb. I also read where the head of Ohio's public schools is ordering district superintendents to supply the names of homeschoolers in their districts because the state plans to offer on-line charter schools to them (Don't drink the Kool-Aid homeschoolers!) and the public school students who would rather learn at home than put up with all the nonsense they have to during the school day. I'm getting the impression that public schools are running scared.