Posted on 08/20/2004 7:44:54 AM PDT by DeathTaxesNoles
One does not increase options by mandating one choice (education), limiting the options within that choice (no public money for private institutions, etc), and mandating a significant proportion of the overall curriculum.
(Note: I'm not against education, I'm against requiring it. I want everyone to want to learn, but one does not foster that love of learning by using legislative force and threats. Remove the compulsory nature of the system, and at least 50% of the biggest problems go away immediately. Sadly, half of the nation would oppose it, simply because they don't want to lose out on their free daycare.)
Well they weren't educated at all. We were ignorant savages. You can see evidence of this yourself by reading the writings at the time like the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers which are so full of mispellings they'd make Miss Crabtree blush. >:->
Let me add that there were many more things that the average girl had to learn. She had to learn how to make a pattern and hand sew clothes to fit. She had to learn how to cook on a wood burning stove (not an easy trick). Food preservation, dressing out farm animals, quilting (not a hobby, but a necessity), soap making, candle dipping, gardening (again, not for fun but for serious food), herbal medicine, animal husbandry, and on and on. There wasn't a lot of time for reading much more than the Bible and letter writing was common. That life is hard work and takes many skills to live successfully. Add to the above list weaving, crafts and many other cultural past-times and you've got a busy girl. Taking time away from learning these valuable skills and having her study Latin and math was a waste of time and would never be skills that the average woman would ever need.
make that another!
So, eliminating public education will suddenly make irresponsible parents responsible? I think not.
How do you know?
Well worth the triple post!
I don't usually hit people over spelling/grammer unless it affects the context of the post but it is fun to catch those that do. I got one yesterday that had bad spelling in the same sentence in which he was gigging another for that offense.
"grammar" not "grammer."
Sounds like a public education system in the making ...
I know. I get hit on that one about once a month!
Because, communist revolutions are very popular among uneducated, unemployed dead-enders."
Because, if we don't educate the members of our society other countries that do (such as China) will eat us alive.
Because, a democracy cannot survive if its citizens are incapable of participating in the body politic.
I nominate your post for post of the year.
Sometimes private schools are founded by parents who started homeschooling co-ops for their children.
However, it's naive to think that it would be a good thing for this country to eliminate taxpayer-funded education and then just assume that kids will get an education.
Good original question, and one which for which there is ample evidence from America's remarkable beginnings and its first 100 years or so.
America's Founders said the people themselves must clearly understand the ideas and principles upon which their Constitutional government was based in order to be able to prevent those in positions of power from eroding those rights.
They established schools and seminaries for the distinct purpose of instilling in youth the lessons of history and ideas of liberty. AND THEY MUST HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFUL, for Tocqueville, eminent French jurist, in the 1830's traveled America and wrote: '...every citizen... is taught...the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution...it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon."
On the frontier, he observed that "...no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling that shelters him....He wears the dress and speaks the language of the cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present.... I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts of France." He continued, "It cannot be doubted that in the United States the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of the democratic republic; and such must always be the case...where the instruction which enlightens the understanding is not separated from the moral education."
Until the early 1800's, American schooling was largely voluntary and mostly privately-funded by fees and by philanthropy for those unable to pay. Education among Americans was almost universal.
In 1765, John Adams wrote: "A native of America who cannot read and write is a rare...as a comet...," noting that of France's 24 million population, only half a million could read and write. The addition of a system of public schools, locally funded and controlled, was supported, but repeated efforts to set up a centralized and compulsory system were unsuccessful.
The State of Massachusetts House Committee on Education's Report of March, 1840, stated: "The establishment of the Board of Education seems to be the commencement of a system of centralization and a monopoly of power in a few hands, contrary, in every respect, to the true spirit of our democratical institutions and, which, unless speedily checked, may lead to unlooked-for and dangerous results...the idea of the State controlling Education...seems...a great departure from the uniform spirit of our institutions....Any attempt to force all our schools and all our teachers upon one model would destroy competion...and even the spirit of improvement itself." Objecting to tax-supported teacher-training schools, the Report said privately-supported schools were providing an adequate supply of competent teachers, concluding: "There is a high degree of competition existing between these academies, which is the bet guaranty of excellence."
In 1920, 83% of school revenues came from local funds.
As that percentage has declined, control has shifted to greater and greater bureaucracies, and the combined political power of the special-interest groups, institutional bureaucracies, and teachers' unions may not coincide with the best interests of the learning performance of children.
Early as 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education concluded, "...the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity." That report concluded essentially that if a foreign power had set out to harm us, it couldn't have done a better job.
Contrast that view with Thomas Jefferson's Bill For the More General Diffusion of Knowledge For Virginia declared: "...experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate...the minds of the people...to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth. History, by apprizing them of the past, will enable them to judge of the future...it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views...."
The purpose of education was not learning for the sake of learning to read and write. It had a more noble aim.
As we have "dumbed down" our citizens through systematically forcing them into sometimes failing schools, we have, perhaps, risked the future liberty of generations by not "apprizing them of the past," and making them knowledgeable about those who may disguise their ambitions for power under cloaks of promises for goodies from oppressive government.
Some of the materials here are quoted from "Our Ageless Constitution" (1987). An on-line library of works related to America's founding may be located at http://www.personal.pitnet.net/primarysources
Maybe not. But that does not justify shifting the cost of the education of children to others. There are parents out there who feed their children crap, plop them in front of filthy videos and expose them to second hand smoke. Because they are irresponsible, does that justify government control of diet, entertainment and cigarette consumption in our homes? You have fallen for the "at risk" hypothesis, a justification for all sorts of liberal intervention.
Watch it. You are being too sensible. I have even forgot what it is was we were at odds with the other day.
Yeah, I checked it on Snopes, too, and found that the "debunking" reads like it was written by an NEA administrator.
Unfortunately for the de-bunkers, there is too much evidence in other places about the "dumbing-down" of the American education system. I once had a set of reproduction "McGuffey's Readers", and the THIRD GRADE reader had material I didn't get exposed to until my HIGH-SCHOOL English classes (and THAT was back in the Sixties---Gawd knows what the situation is now).
Further, in one of Robert A. Heinlein's autobiographical sketches, he talked about the comparative educations gotten by his grandfather, father, and himself in Kansas. The grandfather had had to take (among other things) Latin, Greek, and Hebrew--the father had-had only the Latin and Greek, and Heinlein only had to get the Latin (not exactly quoting here, as I read this years ago--but the context is correct). He went on to say that this was in a PUBLIC SCHOOL, and that by comparison, the youngsters being educated when he wrote the article, in the same school system, were getting "pap" instead of an education by comparison to even what HE got taught.
WOD, I think.
Though, to be honest, I generally find the WOD threads are as repetitive as the crevo debates. They've become a stylized kabuki dance.
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