I'm personally in favor of still permitting homeschooling, and private schooling.

Here's the thing -- I want schools that are the same quality as the good private ones available to everyone, paid from public funds.

I don't think there's some magical aura about a private school that makes it good -- it's the ability to charge more, and spend more to maintain a higher standard for the teachers, to have a good teacher/student ratio, and generally have ways of getting more funds to improve their facilities, pay for supplies, etc.

So...they're better funded.

Maybe instead of buying 50 B-2 stealth nuclear bombers, costing $110 billion (or more), we could pay for better schools.

To propose that de-funding education will help education is somewhat ludicrous. Private schools are only good now because if they're not better than the public schools, they can't justify their tuition costs. Eliminating public education will just let us get to experience the wonderful horrors of capitalism done at the low-margin end of the spectrum, only now our nation's children will get to bear the effects directly.

It'll help make sure that wealth is hereditary -- rich kids get educated, and get a good chance to become rich themselves, while the poor get little or no education, and live out their life working menial jobs...if they're lucky.

In my utopia, we educate everyone through college for free, we take care of their medical costs from conception to the grave, and we still get to have all that free market competition for goods and services. Being born to poor parents will still mean you have less advantages than being born to rich ones, but it won't be the epic uphill climb it is today.

You'll pay more taxes, but there won't be any shortage of well-educated healthy people in the workforce, and the economic and cultural benefits of that will far outweigh what tax increase (or defense spending cuts) done to pay for it.

Other industrialized nations have done that over the last 3 decades, and they're kicking our ass in the world market because of it.

^You dear sir, are bat shit insane. More taxes equals a more well-educated workforce? Ive got a news flash for you: OUR TAXES ARE THE HIGHEST THEY'VE EVER BEEN! OUR EDUCATION IS ARGUABLY THE WORST IT'S EVER BEEN!

And, please, I need you to cite examples and references of those "other industrialized nations" that have paid so much more into their educational systems than we have and are reaping the benefits. And, if you could make that reference "peer-evaluated" and "politically unbiased" that would be awesome, though I'm sure you cannot. Essentially what I'm saying is: I don't believe you. Show me that Utopian government success story, and I'll show you a lie.

I have a good friend of a friend who is a teacher at a charter school here in LA. He's an Anarchist (not the Molotov Cocktail type), so he's extremely left. He even agrees with me that the Department of Education is a joke and needs to be repealed and dissolved. He agrees that it hurts the children's education. And, he's a far leftist with a subjective perspective into that morass.

I will agree with you somewhere, though. I will agree we need to stop paying into the military industrial complex. One-hundred percent! But, the answer isn't to take money away and move it somewhere else. We just need to stop our government from taking so much. Period!

You're both wrong. The problem with the public education system in the U.S. is not monetary. It's jurisdictional. Why do we allow thousands of local school boards decide what will and will not be taught? Many (most?) of these school boards are filled with agenda driven ideologues who haven't the least bit of experience in teaching or education.

You want to improve the education system? Devise a comprehensive curriculum for K-12 that is rationally based and universal. Local decisions about what kids need to learn is an anachronism from the agricultural bliss of Jefferson's mind.

Or perhaps you think that each local community can decide for itself whether or not evolution or calculus or music or critical thinking should be taught.


This is not about money. It's about ideas, and the ones that as a coherent society we wish to further. Sure, keep letting those local school boards decide that the "evolution controversy" should be taught. I don't care how much money you give them, they will still churn out class after class of folks who think fossils are the work of the devil.


PS: blankfist, L.A. = Los Angeles, LA = Louisiana.

Yeah, how egocentric of us in Los Angeles to refer to ourselves without a state! I never type the periods because of laziness, to be honest. I know, I know. It's because LA is so universally understood. If I still lived in Graham, NC, I'd never just call it Graham or G.

Jonny, I think I kind of get your meaning, though I'm still a bit confused. I have to disagree with you when you alude we should force people to accept a "universal" method of education. Where's the freedom in that? I am an atheist. Still, who am I to say what someone can or should teach their child? If a parent prefers to teach a child Creationism, who am I to say they cannot?

I adore people like Richard Dawkins who says religion is a form of child abuse. Still, I cannot with clear conscience say I know better than someone else, so I cannot see why I'd force a universal form of education on any child or family. Getting rid of public schools would mean we'd have the freedom to pick how we'd want to teach our children. If you believe in science and evolution, as I do, then you'd be free to either home school them OR send them to a school that was more to your liking. So, in that regard, yes, it's not about money and very much about ideas: The ideas of freedom, not elitist governmental control.

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>> ^jonny:
You're both wrong. The problem with the public education system in the U.S. is not monetary. It's jurisdictional.

Interesting idea. I agree with it in principle, but it'd be a political nightmare to get people to agree on it. Conservatives and creationists would fight a national curriculum tooth and nail.

I'm not sure it's the only thing wrong. There's a shortage of good teachers out there, and I've read a few stories about schools that are canceling music & art programs due to lack of funding.

@blankfist:
Here's a study. It's partisan though, because school teachers wrote it, and you know you can't trust the Big School Lobby.

It also mentions the countries with better funded national education programs, and the better results they're getting from it. It's the usual suspects, essentially all of Europe, the wealthier portions of Asia, oh, and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

I'm more interested in the comment about the military-industrial complex though. If we entirely eliminate national defense spending, don't we lose our standing army?

heh - I was just teasing about the LA thing. I always notice it because I grew up in LA, but now live south of L.A.

Anyway, I don't care about the method of education, even if it is home schooling. I'm worried about the content. My concern is having a well-educated electorate and work force. What every child is taught has a direct impact on everyone else in the community and the nation as a whole.

Getting rid of public schools altogether would be a disaster, as NetRunner notes, because you would have a situation where wealth determines access to education. It already does to some extent because most places use property taxes to fund the local schools.

NetRunner, while I think it's a good idea, I'm not fool enough to think it could happen anytime soon in this country. You're absolutely right about the resistance it would meet, except that I think it wouldn't just be conservatives fighting it. There are significant constitutional barriers to implementing such a program. For instance, I imagine the ACLU might fight it on principle. And I have to agree that good teachers are in short supply, and that is partly a result of funding.

The problem with your taxes, blankfist, is that none of that good $$ goes to education; it goes to iraq. You should come to Denmark, man, I have to pay 41 % and I'm a freaking student. (on the plus side my university tuition is covered completely by the state)

Homeschooling is bad, because parents aren't teachers. Of course, they teach kids the very basic things, but as soon as science, language and history is introduced a less biased teacher should be used. The way it works now in the US with each district deciding the curriculum is the exact same thing, but perhaps a little less biased, because more people have a say. The curriculum should be centralized, such that all schools have to teach within state-based parameters, which should be decided by experts in the respective fields.

this is the 21st century. for $9.95 a month you can get access to all the best minds, best professors, course notes, video lectures, e-books, online study groups, homework problems, exams, and material from kindergarten to a masters degree.

spending $10,000 a year per child (average cost per high school student in the US) is sheer lunacy. the argument from "wealth" is simply irrelevant and outdated at our level of technology. the same can be said for the "parents aren't teachers" and the "insufficient content" arguments. the fact is, in 2008 a child can receive a much better education using online sources than they can in a government classroom, and it is almost two orders of magnitude cheaper.

if the three of you cared about actually educating young people, rather than the creation of some kind of ideological educational monument for all to see, you would be seeking to implement the most efficient, efficacious system instead of throwing more money at a failed institution.

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