He doesn’t even address the question of whether child-rearing is a legitimate or desirable function for the state to assume. Government education is the template for government’s takeover of the support of the elderly, of medical care, of businesses ... usurping the functions free citizens once accomplished for themselves.
No. We are the product of good parenting.
Parents MUST intervene at all levels, remain watchful and de-program a great deal
I am a product of public schooling - thank GOD I rose above it. It did not serve me well. The decline started 40 years ago, it is not going to get better until we elect politicians that have the courage to tear it down and rebuild it.
As a Catholic schools parent, I can only say, “sounds like a plan.”
Why not have public supermarkets?
We would all do better eating government food, right?
“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.”
And since that accountability is not coming in any of our lifetimes, abolishing the bulk of government schooling makes a good deal of sense. How much time, money, and resources do you pour down a rathole before you decide it just isn’t working as you’d hoped?
And what about the legacy of welfare dependency that Aid To Families with Dependent Parents causes?
I’ll kindly invite this gentleman to speak for himself.
Abolish public schools? Heck yeah.
GWB sold us out on public education when he cut a deal with Ted Kennedy to remove private school vouchers from the socialist No Child Left Behind federal bill, basically to get the NEA behind it. Bush then used the success to get re-elected. Don’t forget the single Mom tax credit.
Hell, we cant even get elected republicans to stop federalizing public schools let alone get rid of them (it should be a local issue anyway.)
Lonsberry is an idiot. Millions of conservatives want to abolish 'public' education. I'm one of them. Apparently Lonsberry doesn't even have a passing familiarity with the Constitution.
Hmmm, I must have missed the ceremony where ole Bob was crowned "Speaker for all Conservatives".
Or maybe he has a frog in his pocket when he says "we".
Abolish public education!The total capture of the public education and most large private colleges by the Left is what makes the slide to totalitarian rule inevitable. The knowledge base does not exist in the general population to fight it. There is no sense and knowledge of history thus no sense of what will or will not work or what the consequences of any action or policy must be. People accept what they are told by power seekers because they don't have the tools to evaluate claims. With two generations or total reform to proper American values it could be achieved but there is not the base of knowledge and ability remaining to carry out the reform.
dump pubed, the po, irs, and a whole lot more; dump the presidential palace on penna ave, the ss, aircraft, limos, etc., etc.
Save taxpayer money and save our kids....States need to OUTSOURCE education to the private sector thru vouchers.
if we eliminate the public schools, that atmosphere would go to the private schools, or worse, if the kids aren’t in school at all and are roaming the streets
I do. We could put the best educational material and instruction in the world on the equivalent of YouTube, test in strip malls, and shut the whole babysitting service down for good and do a better job for about a tenth the cost, if that much.
My wife just finished her Masters' as a clinical nurse specialist in the newborn intensive care unit. She took her certification exam at H&R Block and got her results in less than a minute. She said it was the hardest test she'd taken in the entire Masters' program. If they can do that, they can do anything up to the BS level except for lab work.
"Public education" is an archaic and maliciously destructive control edifice. It should be shut down, but not immediately. The NEA was founded by the ideological cohorts of Mann and Dewey. Their purpose in initiating public schooling was to bring socialism to the US. This wasn't some kind of high-jacking, it was planned from the start.
Here is a program to get real change from public schools:
Education Policy Components
Education
Education is the most critical issue in California, more serious than even the budget crisis. When Gray Davis first ran for Governor, he promised that Education was to be his highest three priorities, but instead Mr. Davis has shown us what they really were all along: Re-Election, Re-Election, and Re-Election. What were the results? Education spending per student has increased nearly 30%, while classroom performance remains relatively unimproved and at the bottom of a nation producing a third rate primary and secondary education product. The system is broken and the State is nearly bankrupt. So what can we do?
One answer is to free California’s teachers from the overwhelming power of national unions. Teachers should have a choice whether or not to support an often radical political agenda. Unlike Gray Davis, if you elect me Governor of California, I will enforce the law that prohibits unions from requiring campaign contributions in dues payments without teacher’s permission (Beck (487 US 735), 1988).
Second, we must reverse the trend toward large unified school districts that has effectively excluded parents from affecting public school decisions. The purpose of consolidation was supposedly to reduce the cost of overhead through economies of scale and to strengthen the districts’ collective bargaining power, but that isn’t how it has turned out. Instead, district bureaucracies have become enormous and the resulting issues are so complex that parents are pushed aside by an organizational machine controlled by union lawyers.
I plan to assist formation of corporate service associations for school districts so that they can divest operations into smaller, more personalized institutions while retaining the organizational muscle to deal with the unions. Smaller school districts will give parents a stronger voice on district boards over the issues that matter to them. The principle need to make this possible is to develop programs for children with special needs. Here is where can turn to parents for solutions.
Some would argue that parents on local School Boards aren’t qualified to make administrative decisions about public education, especially over programs for children with developmental challenges. So, I’d like to talk about an education success-story that not only proves that argument wrong, it points toward a total transformation in public education.
Home education is enjoying a renaissance in America, and religious freedom isn’t the principle reason. Parents are choosing to home school to assure educational excellence for their children, whose learning habits they know best. A family bond of patience and discipline is a critical factor in student success, especially in a challenging situation. What many people don't know about home-schools is that they have a high percentage of students with genetic, behavioral, and developmental disabilities that had often been poorly served by public institutions. Even with that statistical disadvantage, SAT, ACT, and STAR test scores strongly indicate that home education is producing superior results across the entire spectrum of individual ability.
So parents ARE competent to make choices about their children’s education, and home schools successfully manage nearly every type of specialized educational problem. So what are they doing right that we can apply to public institutions?
As home-educators have grown in number, they have been organizing into loosely knit education cooperatives that point to a new form of public education: a decentralized, customer-oriented network for lifelong learning, using products customized to meet individual interests and abilities. That promises what 21st Century public education could really become: a multi-disciplinary market of customized learning products and services.
We are already starting to see the effects of this change. Software and curriculum companies are finding a growing market of customers committed to gaining competitive advantage. Colleges and universities are offering online degrees because they need superior students to assure productive alumnae. Superior teachers could get rich transmitting their ideas and methods to a mass-market. Where better to develop those products and sell them to the world than California?
We can use private and home education as if they were R&D laboratories developing and testing proven learning tools and services. Public school parents on school boards could then select those products that the State would fund for use in public schools. It is a gradual transformation, from experimenting on our children with untested academic theories, to contracting for innovative tools and methods that have been proven in the marketplace.
All we have to do is let it happen and keep government from regulating new educational methods out of existence. If you elect me Governor, that is what I will do. Federal education dollars aren’t worth the price of Federal control and bureaucratic requirements. Private and home education both leave the State with more money to spend per-child and provide a competitive incentive for public schools to keep their customers.
Together, let’s help California rise from the ashes of a broken system and lead the way once again, into a world of exciting possibilities for our children.
If you get rid of public schools...what will happen to:
Pajama Day?
Crazy Hair Day?
Red sock Day?
Whacky Hat Day?
Blue shirt Day?
Pink fingernail Day? etc.etc.
How will the children survive?