Posted on 06/23/2010 6:27:30 AM PDT by shortstop
I heard a guy on the radio yesterday say that public education should be abolished.
What a freak.
In the oneupsmanship of marketing to the conservative audience, some people get a little nuts. Not having a true sense of what people feel – lacking an accurate internal compass – they reach for ever more outlandish positions.
That doesn’t serve truth, it exploits and embarrasses it.
So here’s the truth.
No, conservatives don’t want to abolish public education. We want to improve it and make it more accountable to local taxpayers, parents and values.
We conservatives are overwhelmingly the product of public education. We mostly had great experiences, we remember our teachers fondly and we love the schools from which we graduated.
We conservatives are overwhelmingly parents of children in public schools. Yes, we watch carefully what our children learn, and we push back against political correctness, improper morals or any sort of indoctrination. But we are in the PTA and the sports boosters and on the school boards. We are room mothers and field-trip chaperones, and by and large we are grateful for the education our children receive.
And a fair number of us are teachers.
Are there problems with public schools?
Absolutely.
From too much federal influence to the union domination of the teaching profession, there are things in schools which give conservatives pause. We read through the textbooks with a watchful eye and we worry about the politics and examples of some teachers.
And, yes, we conservatives have an agenda for public education. We want to hobble if not kill the federal Department of Education. We want to weaken the power of state and national teachers unions. We want local school boards to be empowered and we want American schools to be what they were created to be – locally controlled and reflective of community values and priorities.
But we don’t want to get rid of public schools.
And though the private-school and home-school movements are appealing to many conservatives, and those are wonderful options parents can exercise in a free society, the overwhelming majority of conservatives choose to send their children to public schools.
Why?
Because they trust them. Because they see the strengths of the system and feel capable of compensating for the weaknesses.
They do that by being parents.
Conservatives believe that they are their children’s first and most important teachers. Values, patriotism, world view, those are taught and reinforced in the home. Even if a course, teacher or textbook stray and preach the gospel of liberalism, good parents over the dinner table can set children right.
Good parents can also make their presence known at the school and challenge things which are contrary to the American spirit and values. Teachers and principals have phones at the school, and will meet with you if you ask them to.
But more often than not, conservatives find in public-school teachers and administrators not adversaries, but regular, hard-working people who look at the world the same way they do. I have had children in public schools for 20 years. I expect to have children in public schools for at least another 15 years. I have seen good and bad teachers and administrators, but the percentages have been about 70-30. Seventy percent good and 30 percent bad.
For every three teachers who preach liberal crud in the classroom, there have been seven who have been patriotic, positive people.
I can live with those percentages.
And my children have flourished under them.
Of my four children who have thus far gone through school, they’ve all turned out to be conservatives – maybe even very conservative. So if public education is brainwashing American kids with liberalism, it’s not doing a very good job of it.
Not when parents and churches and social institutions are doing their duty.
Public education isn’t perfect, but then nothing is. Yes, the forces of liberalism in our society continually try to tighten their grip on our taxpayer-supported schools. But that’s not a one-way tug of war. Our culture, our values, our constitutional heritage are exerting influence, too – thanks in large part to the efforts of good, conservative parents and citizens.
We do need to focus conservative attention on public schools, to continue and enhance the process of oversight and improvement. But saying outlandish things – like calling for the abolition of public education – doesn’t help that cause.
It only makes us look stupid.
Government schools **are** socialism. They are the very essence of socialism.
When children attend government school they learn ( simply by being there) that the government has enormous power to take money from their neighbor to pay for a “single-payer” education service their parents want tuition-free.
Is a “duh” needed here? If government can use police threat to fund single payer government schooling, why not a thousand other socialist wants and needs?
Government schools teach children to be socialists simply by existing, regardless of the curriculum or school policies and whether or not the federal government is involved. Government schools would still teach socialism even if school districts were the size of a suburban housing subdivision and had no state, county, or federal involvement whatsoever.
If children can be made to feel comfortable with accepting single-payer government schooling ( paid for by money collected under police threat) it is a very short step to being comfortable with single-payer Obamacare. If Obamacare is implemented, in one or two generations our nation will be filled with citizens who simply can never imagine getting along without government single-payer health care.
Yes, and they'll use the exact same justifications as those who currently can't imagine any alternative to government education. It's as if part of the brain is blocked, so that apparently normal people type, with a straight face, "But what would we do?!?"
Duh, folks: write a check to the education-provider of your choice.
And...Like Bob Lonsberry, there will be so-called “conservatives” claiming that true conservatives are not against single payer health care. Hey! They loved their Obamacare nurses and doctors, and warm and fuzzy clinics when they were kids, and their now adult children did just fine using single-payer Obamacare!
And just as people ignore the statistics on declining test scores, increased crime, and ever-increasing cost, they can also ignore the statistics on death rates from cancer, waiting times for diagnostic tests and surgeries, and so on.
It should be a no-brainer putting government in charge of something is a bad idea. The desire to stick someone else with the costs of your life is obviously very powerful.
Matthew 5:39 The other side of my face is available to you.
I said expose to different ideas, not VALUES.
There are two possible (only possible) dangers to not doing this. In the first place there is a danger that the parent attempts to turn their child into a carbon copy of themselves, maybe even subconsciously living their lives and aspirations through their children. More subtlely, adherence to strong and moral values is stronger if someone is allowed to think it through themselves. If you believe that homosexuality, for example, is wrong, but the basis of that belief is that “my dad told me so”, that really isnt good enough, not least because it will not be able to stand up to any counter-argument. Alas, we cannot wrap children in cotton wool. Eventually they have to be exposed to the evil in this world, if only because otherwise they will not be able to recognise it in the future. Not easy.
Who is this clown.
Of course we want to abolish public education
We teach our children about other religions and cultures so they are exposed to other ideas. We don’t need someone else to do that for us. You don’t teach values to your children by allowing them to “think it through” for themselves. They can’t think something through logically and come to the truth if you haven’t taught them logic and truth. First teach them logic and truth and when they are confronted with error they will know it. You also don’t teach children about evil by exposing them to it. You protect them from it while teaching them about it. When they are ready to confront it then you send them out into the world and they will be equipped.
What I was saying was that children cannot be shielded from the world forever. Sooner or later theory has to be put into practice, as you say.
If “we” means you and me, definitely. But not you, me, and the author. Oh, well.
I think we agree on all but one point. I do think children can be shielded from the world while they are still children. After they have been raised, protected and taught well, then they are ready to go out into the world.
Alot of people think that homeschooled kids will not be able to cope in the real world but the evidence is contrary to that opinion (not saying you hold that opinion).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.