Another reason to homeschool
People sometimes ask why I don’t like public schools, etc. And there are a lot of reasons, involving lack of accountability, significant liberal bias, misplaced incentives and pro-government dogma presented as facts.
The most compelling reason, however, simply has to do with the fact that government school systems have a lot of power, and when the wrong person has control of that power, bad things happen.
I know, you look at this article and say to yourself “Yes, that was a bad thing, but it was an isolated incident.”
The problem is that those “isolated incidents” are occurring all the time, all over the country. As we (the people) give more power to the school systems and the administrators, we make the administrative positions more attractive to unscrupulous, immoral people who will happily abuse these positions to enrich themselves.
I know, a lot of times, people who want to give school systems more power do so with only the best of intentions. But just like deciding to turn to the dark side of the Force to save your wife from a painful death in childbirth, in the end, it’s just a bad idea.
(hat tip: TJICstan)
Schools reflect the society that funds them and elects their management.. and yet for their short-comings they are in the sunshine of a publicly debated curriculum and the endless verification of standardized testing.
Are there bad teachers and bad schools? Are there bad parents? Yes. A bad parent or even a good parent who home-schools but is ignorant - or worse, willfully ignorant will have a negative impact on their child and the child will have no other, positive inputs on their education.
As far as pervasive liberal bias? Schools are under continuous (even prvasive!) attack by social conservatives - as evidenced by the recent fight here over science standards. Parents had a teacher fired for “witchcraft” this past year (which consisted of card tricks). All in all schools have survived their acid bath very well in the face of mendacious behavior and inadequate funding.
Comment by Walter R. Moore — July 29, 2008 @ 1:03 pm