As we all know, business monopolies create terrible hardship. Government monopolies create hardship, murder, war, tyranny, and a despickable regression in the advancement of civilization.
The Catholic Church created a spiritual monopoly in Europe which earned the entire continent's era the infamous title, "Dark Ages". Eventually Europeans wised up and experienced a Renaissance of art and science, and civilization prospered. Ironically, the Arab world, who prospered while Europe was doing "Hail Mary's" in the Dark Ages, traded places under the dark oppression of Isalm as the progress-undoing torchbearers of world culture.
Then the French revolution changed the entire world with philosophies such as those of Thomas Locke, which our own Constitution shamelessly borrows from. Our founding fathers built a government to protect these rights: to life, liberty, and the persuit of happiness. Ignoring the clearly defined limited role our government is restrained to by our sacred document, people thought it'd be a good idea to let our government have a monopoly on education.
Fast-forwarding through the entire history of public schools, you'll find it mirrors the life cycle of any government: it starts out noble and responsible, then declines as it grows larger until it eventually explodes under the weight of its own fat, like the dude from the movie "Seven".
The government now spends approximately $11,000 per year per student, and yet they constantly get their asses whipped silly by private schools who very rarely have tuitions as high as the "little man's" school system. If it's starting to making you feel uneasy, read on!
Private schools are better because the school has to earn your money by providing competent schooling, and having a proven track record of superior test scores and college placement. If the school doesn't perform, your kid goes to a better one.
Solution: Not everyone can afford private schools, for sure. But how about this: you get to choose where your $11,000 per child that the government coughs up goes to. You get to pick the school that will teach your child how to succeed academically. Because public schools don't compete, they are subject to the brutality of a government-run monopoly. Prayer in school? Vote with your wallet. Orchestra, sports? Again, vote with your wallet. Single-sex, co-ed? Stop bitching at people who can only accept a one-size-fits-all answer and make things happen!
Left wingers who get elected by pandering to idiots are hypocritical to the core on this. Reverend Jesse Jackson refuses to allow choice in our education system, yet all his kids went to private schools. "The public schools aren't good enough where I live". Basically, the politicians who oppose your right to choose believe that they deserve a priveledge that you do not.
The people who would need higher education standards are the poor and the middle class- exactly the people who cannot afford private schools, at least not without vouchers. Public schools fail the people who need them the most.
12 comments:
This was the bombshell I promised y'all last week. I just saw Steve Forbes on Neil Cavuto, and it reminded me to chime in.
read Freakonmics for his take on the performance difference between public and private schools
i never attended a public school till i went to college. so many of the public schools here in chicago are terrible.
its seems the cps(chicago public schools) is renovating schools only to close them. not too much later they are appearing as charter schools. some of the other schools are just closed completely, which could force a student to go to a lower performing schools.
the vouchers could work, but its up to the students to prove they work. the only way they can do this is by succeding in the private school
I just read the Wiki for that book. It sounds fucking fascinating. I'm going to throw that one in the hopper, even allowing it to cut in line:
1) John Stossel "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity" (in progress)
2) Adam Smith "Wealth of Nations"
3) Levitt, Dubner "Freakonomics"
4) Fredrick the Great "Instructions to his Generals"
5) Tucker Max "The Definitive Book of Pick-Up Lines"
6) Trump, Kiyosaki "Why We Want You to be Rich"
CJ,
I hate to hear about CPS. With a voucher system in place, the parents could demand that these schools do their job. You're absolutely correct about learning being 100% the responsibility of the student. Nothing can ever change that.
God knows public schools don't need more money. They can't even spend the money we're giving them. A government monopoly on education is not a problem that can be fixed by just throwing more money at it.
The public school systems in this country are i n shambles. My kid goes to private school as well. I'm not sure what the answer is to this problem, but something needs to be done, before we raise another generation of idiots. I know schools down here in Texas are so reliant on standardized testing to evaluate the quality of the schools, they have have completely forgoten to teach the kids.
Kids these days are just being forced into rembering trivial crap or idiotic methods to work out math problems. A few months ago, I had the displeasure of helping my nephew study for one of these tests. I attempted to help him with the math portion, because i like to think I can work out most math problems. The methods that their booklet described to work out even the easiest of math problems were so idiotic that they confussed me.
With all of the brilliant minds in this country, we have to be able to emplement a proper way to educate our children, and provide an equal opportunity for ALL children in this country.
BND,
I share your worry of another generation of goddamned idiots.
At the gym where I lift, there's two high school girls who work at the front counter. They are considered excellent students with very high GPA's. However, when they study for tests, and you talk to them about the material they're learning, it makes me sad to my very soul to see that these girls have a GPA that's much more than a whole point higher than mine was, yet they are so fucking stupid they can't remember anything that doesn't have to do with MTV or text messages on their cell phones.
Of course when it comes to math and science my GPA was unfuckwithable. Somehow, public schools completely turned me off to any type of reading. They made it dreadful. Now, after being in charge of my own learning as an adult, I've had a Renaissance of litereature, and discovered that reading is one of my favorite things to do.
I'm severely worried about the nearly-retarded high school graduates that we're lavishing with praise these days. These fucking idiots are going to work with us in the real world someday. The future of our economy is in the hands of a government monopoly, and that scares the holy shit out of me.
Here's what makes the most sense to me right now:
The federal government and your state and local governments are still docking your pay, and all your neighbor's pay to raise money to send your kid to a government-run information facility. They spend about $11,000 per year on it, even though you spend out-of-pocket to ensure that LittleNewsDay gets exposed to the finest academics available.
Assuming that we don't cut property taxes outright, you should get a check for no less than half the amount that the government would spend trying to teach your kid in one of their boondoggle-houses to cover tuition at a place with standards, and is accountable by your ability to fire them as your child's educator.
I agree that we need to do something, but I also believe that there will always be a need for public schools. We need to chnage the way money is allotted to the schools in order to make sure that the children have what they need. The problem is not with a lack of funding, but with improper spending. Contractors frequently rip off school disricts; school board officials and administrators bilk the system; and inefficiant procedures are left in place for far too long.
It really sucks that political bullshit is having such a negative effect on our youth. Also, I strongly believe that children should be able to vote for their school board members, principals, and teaachers.
One of the things to keep in mind is that its not just the schools themselves, but the parents. The simplified version of a complicated matrix is this:
The TYPES of parents who are motivated enough to send their children to private schools are generally the TYPES of parents to emphasize education in their families, come from a more educated background themselves, provide a better environment in the home, better nutrition, etc. So, its not just that private schools do a better job at educating, its that they get a better class of students to educate.
Good point blsabob. I know that my son is far beyond his friends that go to public school. We do push him to work hard, but the school also piles work on these kids. I keep telling him how much this will benefit him latter in life, but I'm even suprised at the amount of work they make these kids complete.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that is a combination of better teachers, better curiculum, better resources, and parents willing to stay active inthelives of their kids. It is very unfortunate that so many parents seem to care so little about their children. It doesn't make any sense to me at all,
Poor schools will almost always produce poor results. The voucher system will only create a select list of elite schools, just like the charter program. It won't help at all since many kids will remain in shit schools. The voucher program is typical conservativism where the role of the government is sought to be destroyed. If we don't demand of our government fundamental education, why even have a government at all?
Unfortunately, I am a Chicago Public Schools student. I attended the public schools all the way through high school. My parents couldn't afford to send me to a private school. Even if they a voucher program, it wouldn't be feasible to send me to a school across the city. You see, complications arise when you're on the bottom of the economic ladder.
Luckily, I was able to get good-enough grades to be accepted at a private university. Despite the dire straits the CPS system is, I learned all that was offered to me. I had the one luxury of having a stable household, but that can't be said for all other poor households. This is where external factors that affect education come in, but that's a discussion for a different day.
Post a Comment