Headlining the Nation/World section of my Sunday Chicago Tribune was this, “Santorum Blasts Public Schools”. I wondered what kind of over the top criticism he had offered up, so I eagerly read the article, but was quickly disappointed. He really offered up only a few obvious and fairly benign critiques.
Now, of course we have to pause here because every article covering Santorum on education is going to note that he is one of those freaky homeschool people. As if only homeschoolers have issues with public education, they may be the most active in doing something about it, but they are hardly the only ones to have issues.
The fact is the public education system in America, as we know it, is over 100 years-old. We have upgraded virtually every other area of our society significantly in the past 100 years, but the same model is being used in public education. It also should be more and more obvious that the government is not doing a great job.
The government model of education is breaking. I could spend the rest of this blog citing statistics that we all have heard that demonstrate it. It is a large, inflexible model that operates largely in secret because too many parents let it. The fact is, in a world where 2 parents feel the need to work to have the material comforts they want, it is easy to believe that a benign government is doing a good job of providing a free education. What is the alternative? Homeschooling? Paying private school tuition on top of property taxes?
But the system effectively works like this. Within a given geographic area, a group of kids are rounded up and shipped to a school. The school is staffed with teachers and administrators who are compensated almost purely on the amount of time they have been able to hold that job. Furthermore, their retirement depends on how long they stay in that job. Also, not everyone is considered capable of the role, they must have gone to college specifically for training in education, even if they have significant subject matter expertise.
The curriculum your child is exposed to over 12 years will include things like Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Islam, and sex education. I say this based on my experience of going all through public schools in one of the top states in the country for education (based on test scores) and in one of the top districts in that state. Notice in my listing of the curriculum, I did not note Capitalism or Christianity. Those are not taught. In our “religions of the world” lesson in 8th grade we covered Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. The Islamic stuff was almost entirely incorrect by the way.
Your child may be lucky enough to sit in a 9th grade classroom and watch a teacher put a condom over a banana. I had that experience. That was only after my 8th grade experience where a guest speaker put her condom over her entire arm for us in some kind of awkward sex talk. Your child may sit in an 8th grade classroom whose bookshelves contain none of the classic, yet two copies of a book graphically depicting teenage sex and drug use. I had that experience.
They may even be able to look out a window of their school and see a park across the street where dozens of kids were permitted to gather everyday in lieu of attending class. Instead of studying geometry, they studied Marlboros. The truth is the teachers weren’t their parents, didn’t feel that responsible for them, and were happy not to have them disrupting class.
I am not bitter about my public education experience. It is what it was, there were good lessons in there, I did have great teachers at times, and my parents could not afford to pay taxes to this system and private school tuition. But there is a reason, even coming through it as a college student, I realized a lot of what I learned that was of value, I learned on my own in the books I chose to read.
We need to unleash market forces on education. It is not an experiment, any more than public education. Let schools compete for voucher dollars, with the best teachers and best curriculum they can put together. Let the government administer and compile the standardized testing data, to let us know how they are doing. Advocates of public education will decry this as something that will suck funding away from public schools.
Well, the public school system as we know it is on the verge of collapse, we cannot afford it anymore. The state of Florida implemented vouchers because they cost the state less per pupil and can alleviate funding crises in overcrowded districts. As budgets get cut at all levels, it will become more and more necessary to pursue such solutions. I for one will be happy to pay $3,000 a year to send my child to a Catholic School. It is a very reasonable sum for a good education and I do it not because I did not attend public school, but because I did.
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