govt. schools were made to protect/reward the losers---and punish/limit the winners---all backwards--forced subsidization of public education(monopoly) by private education is a tyranny and unfair restraint of trade--freedom!
is it any coincidence that our public schools started going south about the time that prayer was forced out?
You can't polish a turd. Government controlled public schools will stink no matter how you get them to sparkle. Since I can't flush the public school system away, I avoid the stench and the exposure of my own child to its contagion.
First problem: This money was "stolen" from ALL tax payers, not just the parents. It should not be the responsibilty of Free citizens to support other people's children. We also need to do away with compulsory attendence laws. Private scholarships could be provided by organizations, companies and the schools themselves to go toward the educations of low-income families whose children genuinely wished to attend school as those who do not wish to be there are usually the ones doing nothing but causing trouble and distraction.
Someone (2sheep) mentioned John Dewey. It's even worse than one might think. The ideals espoused by Dewey can summed up in one word - Humanism; as evidenced by the following:
"The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith. ....The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new--the rotting corpse of Christianity and the new faith of Humanism." "A Religion for a New Age," The Humanist - January/February 1983, p. 26.
Humanism teaches that ALL things are relative, that there are no such things as right and wrong and that no personal decision is ever wrong. How can we expect our Nation's children to grow up to become responsible, caring citizens when they are bombarded by these concepts from kindegarten through college? Answer is, unless those children have VERY involved parents, we probably can't.
The fastest way to change the public school system is to stop using it's services.
I have a serious question: If the schools are funded by the government, and Atheism is a religion, has the government established a religion? Therefore, are not the government schools allowed to ban prayer and the ten commandments? Just been thinking about this lately...
Environmentalism is usually not based in science, it proposes a cohesive world view and an object of worship.
Eliminating Environmentalism's belief system from Public Schools would at least make the classroom neutral ground. Right now, Public Schooling is hostile to monotheism, and promotes the deification of the environment.
This sounds almost identical to the education proposal Alan Keyes made during the Republican Primary last year. I thought it was a good idea at that time (at least better than the alternatives), and I still do now. One nice effect is that it pretty much eliminates the need for "public schools," as the term is understood today.
But it would be nice if we could get back to the idea that parents ought to pay for their own kids' education without having to send the money through the government first. That obviously won't happen until public attitudes about that sort of thing change, and this would be a large step in that direction.
*Homeschool_list bump...
(Free Republic Bump List Register)
The right to a school that will leave my child feeling good about himself without him learning anything substantive.
The right to a school that will teach him that homosexuality is equivalent to heterosexuality at as early an age as possible.
The right to a school that will ban all religious teaching except for belligerent religions like Islam.
The right to a school that will have the school psychologist recommend depressant drugs for my child.
The right to a school that will refer my daughter for an abortion without my knowledge.
The right to a school that will teach my child how to use a condom.
The right to a school that will teach my children that we live in an oppressive patriarchal society that does not recognize the contributions of women and minorities.
The right to a school that will have computers and access to the pornography superhighway.
The right to a school that will teach children to reject their parents' beliefs.
Isn't this the voucher system that conservatives have been pushing for?
I know atheists would feel alienated, but nothing could be further from the truth. Praising the Federal government's right to adopt a fundamental Christian character would reinforce the praising of individual atheists to adopt their own fundamental character. Governance and peaceful personal character should be encouraged at all levels of governance.