Even at the worst it can be, I do still support the public option.
Public schools are necessary.
(what did you think I meant?)
Schools don't exist to challenge the bright, educate the willing, or help to develop a sense of curiosity in the young.
Schools didn't come to be out of these admittedly altruistic goals.
Schools did come to be for a specific altruistic goal, though - educating those who have no other opportunity for education.
Schools as we know them in the U.S. today developed at least in part in order to give children a chance to escape blindingly horrific poverty by educating them at a bare minimum level that would give them the tools and the *time* and the chance to get out, to scrabble upwards out of impossible circumstances.
The tools - the basics of reading and writing and arithmetic, the basic foundation of our nation's history , and for a very long time, a somewhat harsh moral and often religious moral code.
When many lived in poverty - when poverty in the U.S. had a meaning - children had to work just to help keep the family alive. There was no good reason for a family to permit the children to get education- their labor was needed.
But that led to generational entrapment - no way out.
Schools changed that, and over time, labor laws changed that.
But do you seriously believe that even given today's labor laws that children of the poor would attend school if no law said parents had to send them ?
For so many children today poverty is linked to drug and alcohol abuse in the people caring for them- and those addictions do not lend themselves to giving a damn whether or not Jr goes to school- in fact, a child NOT in school can not report abuse, also rampant in poverty stricken areas.
Education is mandatory because as much as we value D.A.R.E. and social engineering and football teams and band, any child CAN get the basics out of a public school education if they desire it- and those who do desire it get the chance that schools were created to give.
They are not all children, and those who do not need the protection of mandatory education can and should be educated by loving parents if at all possible - I homeschool to give MY kids more than a bare minimum chance.
But I don't care to take that shot away from the countless children who don't have what my kids do.
(what did you think I meant?)
Schools don't exist to challenge the bright, educate the willing, or help to develop a sense of curiosity in the young.
Schools didn't come to be out of these admittedly altruistic goals.
Schools did come to be for a specific altruistic goal, though - educating those who have no other opportunity for education.
Schools as we know them in the U.S. today developed at least in part in order to give children a chance to escape blindingly horrific poverty by educating them at a bare minimum level that would give them the tools and the *time* and the chance to get out, to scrabble upwards out of impossible circumstances.
The tools - the basics of reading and writing and arithmetic, the basic foundation of our nation's history , and for a very long time, a somewhat harsh moral and often religious moral code.
When many lived in poverty - when poverty in the U.S. had a meaning - children had to work just to help keep the family alive. There was no good reason for a family to permit the children to get education- their labor was needed.
But that led to generational entrapment - no way out.
Schools changed that, and over time, labor laws changed that.
But do you seriously believe that even given today's labor laws that children of the poor would attend school if no law said parents had to send them ?
For so many children today poverty is linked to drug and alcohol abuse in the people caring for them- and those addictions do not lend themselves to giving a damn whether or not Jr goes to school- in fact, a child NOT in school can not report abuse, also rampant in poverty stricken areas.
Education is mandatory because as much as we value D.A.R.E. and social engineering and football teams and band, any child CAN get the basics out of a public school education if they desire it- and those who do desire it get the chance that schools were created to give.
They are not all children, and those who do not need the protection of mandatory education can and should be educated by loving parents if at all possible - I homeschool to give MY kids more than a bare minimum chance.
But I don't care to take that shot away from the countless children who don't have what my kids do.