“Government has no business in education whatsoever. Government can’t even run a 2-car funeral, much less run schools. What kids learn in pre-K is to sit down, shut up, and do what they are told. The smarter ones are probably bored to tears. Young children need adult guidance in manners and behavior and freedom to explore, create, and run around.”
I think you and I agree on the way it SHOULD BE. Where we may part ways is how we deal with the way it IS. You’re always going to have conservative, faith-filled households with good parents as well as godless liberal parents who lack the time/energy/desire to teach their kids the simplest things. In the latter scenario the kids are the real losers and it’s a real shame.
FYI my wife is a conservative Christian woman who cares about kids. We shouldn’t paint all public education with a broad brush should we?
In order to fix education we need to:
1. Remove the teachers who don’t care and replace them with those who do. It’s near impossible to get fired for being a poor teacher these days. That’s ludicrous!
2. Let those GOOD teachers do their job! Bureaucrats don’t know what they are talking about for the most part.
Although not many Freepers would agree, there are thousands of government workers who attempt to do a good job. It is the system that doesn’t work. Government is force. It is designed to maintain order and to defend from enemies. That is government’s only legitimate function, and it doesn’t even do that very well. No matter how well intentioned parents and teachers may be, the system will continue to deteriorate. Good teachers will continue to be frustrated in their attempts to change the system, and Christian parents should not be sending their children to places where their faith is mocked and even banned.
If government had been in charge of communication, we would be talking to each other by means of tin cans attached with strings.
As long as we have the moribund, one-size-fits-all government school system there will be no progress, no innovation, no real change, and a constant fight over who controls things. Why are we still doing things the way they were done 100 years ago? Why are children marched lockstep through the system regardless of their individual abilities? How many generations of poor kids are we going to sacrfice to terrible inner city schools?
Schools are quite similar to prisons, complete with all the negative social systems that are part of prison life. The worst thing that ever happened to this country was when government took over education.
And there is peer pressure even in pre-school. I just read an article about it the other day. Kids are not meant to be raised in herds. They need individual attention and some freedom to play and be creative. I realize that our government has so ruined the economy that it is difficult for many families to survive on one income, but that does not alter what is best for kids.
I can only imagine the different forms that education might have taken if left to the market and to creative people whose first interest was in educating children and not in pleasing the bureaucrats and doing things a certain way just because that is always how they were done. *sigh*