There was a protest
yesterday. There were people, placards, and pavement pounding. And there were
problems. The main problem being one of trying to suss-out exactly what was
being protested.
The signs said things like “support our teachers” and “keep the PUBLIC in Public Schools!” But as the placards all had vaguely positive things to say, not one of them had anything specific to say. The actual story (at the link above) is less interesting than the discussion that a friend of mine and I had once we had seen the protest.
That discussion was basically this: public schools are
important! They are too important to be left to corporate charter schools and
parochial schools to handle the bulk of the training. It’s not that private
schools don’t have a role to play, but they cannot be the answer to every
problem. …especially not if it is done at the expense of a public school
system.
I’ve heard the arguments that the public schools teach
things that parents disagree with and that is the reason for the resurgence of
the parochial schools. That is a fine and good reason, but you cannot expect to
have that education paid for with public funds. Not if you expect to live in
the modern, technological society we have. If you expect to live in a world
with modern medicines, and high technology, unless you have an educated
population.
I’ve heard the arguments that the public schools don’t teach
a good curriculum. That may or may not be true, but the idea that having your
children educated by a corporate for-profit charter school is not really right
for the entire population. A for-profit school system must have the profit
margin as its first goal. Excuse me for my ignorance, but isn’t the first goal
of a school to teach?
I’ve heard the argument that schools are dangerous places
and that students are unruly. How is that the school’s problem? If a child
misbehaves, it is a problem of the child and the parent. To blame the school is
to blame the highway that we have people speeding!
I’ve heard the argument that the schools are under-funded.
If this is true, I fail to see how moving money out of the public school system
and giving it to the private system is a solution.
And the DUMBEST argument I have ever heard is the argument
that one needn’t support the schools unless one has children in that system. The
problem with this line of logic is that no man is an island. If you expect to
live in a world that has the things that we have all become accustomed to, we
need an educated populace. We need to keep progressing or we start to stagnate.
To innovate you need an educated younger generation. You need a generation that
looks to the future and keeps striving to improve. If you want a world that
reaches for the future you cannot have a world in which your children taught
that the world was created six thousand years ago and that all the great
scientific discoveries of the past are bunk if they contradict that.
A world that continues to make great strides cannot be
attained by a populace more interested in profit than in innovation. In short –
if you want a world that continues to improve for everyone, you cannot have a
world that takes away from everyone to give to small groups of religions or
corporations. Studies show that moving public monies into private educations
simply increases the gap between those who can afford a good education and
those who cannot.
To paraphrase the old saying: A rising tide lifts all boats,
but only if they have intact hulls. If you smash the hull, the boat will sink!
Wherever you are today I hope that you will support your
local public school system.
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