That’s quite a radical idea. To my mind at least.
I like this idea, too. Essentially, let us have school vouchers, and let the money go to homeschooling parents, or to private schools of their choice, if they choose these venues instead of sending their kids to public schools.
The only problem I have with it is that we now have a lot less public participation on community in general. Back in the days when most people were publicly educated, communities were mostly small and pretty tight. Since the 1950s, people are much less likely to be involved in public institutions, join clubs, hang out with neighbours or in neighbourhood venues, and even to vote.
I find it amazing that people forget that up until 150 years ago, the government had no involvement in education in North America. Or at least I would, if the current education system had any interest in educating young people. The state’s involvement in education is directly responsible for the incredible dumbing down of entire generations of people.
Entrenched widespread corruption? Name a ‘more educated’ country that doesn’t have that. America before public schooling was far less corrupt than it is today. Corrupt? Yes; it’s virtually impossible to eliminate corruption completely. But thanks to the public education system, an entire generation is growing up that doesn’t even recognize the corruption for what it is. If America still educated its own children as it did at the beginning, the left would not exist in America.
You have a situation where most high school graduates can’t do anything more complex than basic math, can barely read a newspaper, and care more about celebrity shenanigans than political corruption. How much less educated can the public be? I don’t know any homeschoolers who aren’t far ahead of the government school kids at comparable ages.
Only for the time being; as more people become aware of just how much damage is being done to their children, they will rise up and fix the situation the way they always have: vote the bums out and put the right people in.
Sorry to jump in, I think they do that in PA, too. You can put your child in a ‘cyber’ school, the same as a homeschool, the kids are tested to see if they are on target with the typical child in that age bracket, something like that.
This is our first year “cyber schooling” and we love it. Its not the same as homeschooling though, you still have teachers for every subject just like a brick and morter school, but yes all the material is provided by that state. I’m not “teaching” my child, but more or less keeping her responsible for the requirements within the lessons that the teacher provides. There are online classes every day.
If you can demonstrate that people were better-educated prior to state-funded education, I would be interested.
As you immediately pointed out, there is always corruption. But my contention is that in educated countries the corruption is generally neither entrenched nor widespread to the degree you find in less-educated countries Obviously there are exceptions - Russia comes to mind as a country that is well-educated yet blighted by corruption.
You’ll have to be more specific; I’m not aware of widespread rioting in Europe. And riots may not have been the best example - you won’t find riots in totalitarian states, either. My main concern was the susceptibility of uneducated masses to riots directed against scapegoated groups (often with tacit government support), such as we’ve seen in Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Sudan, or East Timor. While similar tensions exist in many places, they haven’t gained the same traction in places like South Africa, India, Thailand, and education is a part of that.
That’s a pretty broad brush you’re painting with. I don’t know that I’d call countries like say Denmark or Estonia ineffective democracies, or that they are mired in bureaucracies that idolize inefficiency. But to each his own.
If you stopped educating the government school kids, I think it’s fair to say they would be considerably less-educated. Without government coercion to attend school, and government involvement in regulating those schools, some children will get no education at all, and many will probably attend lower-quality schools that are cheaper or more convenient.
10 years ago, if you even suggested abolishing the public school system you'd no doubt be called insane, but as our economy continues to decline, I think before too long we'll be able to rephrase that suggestion and simply ask "Is public education really more important than a roof over your head or food on the table" ? Or to put it in more sarcastic terms, it may be a luxury we can literally no longer afford.