Private and Home Schooling Isn't Necessarily Better than Public Schooling (rant)
In the AZ debate, Romney, Santorum, Newt, and Pails espoused views in response to an audience member's question about education, in which they very unanimously, indicated that they want to shrink the Department of Education and get the Federal, as well as State governments (Paul remained neutral on this since he's a state's rights advocate, but he supports Federal de-funding as well) out of education, and put it all in the hands of communities. I think it was Mitt who went as far as saying he wants it back int he hands of parents, which is really just code for privatizing all schools and the pretext for ending compulsory, primary and secondary education. The audience member's question had to do specifically with Santorum's support of No Child left behind in 2004, which he promptly denounced his support of. Judging by his overall views about where he want's education to go, along with the rest of the Republicans, I don't see what their overall disagreement with the effects of No Child Left Behind is, which is the wide scale federal de-funding of public schools. ???? Maybe they just disagreed with Bush's style of doing it in a covert, sneaky way and that they're promising to screw American children out of an education more directly?
Whenever I hear any debate about public education though, Private and homeschooling seems to always be presented as superior. I think it only depends on the school though. Private schooling tends to cost more, and home schooling only works if there's a dedicated parent that can stay home with the kid and train them to pass state school exams. That's kind of hard for middle and lower class working parents in this day and age, especially during a recession.
On a side note, what would become of state school standards if these Republicans have their way? Maybe in their infinite wisdom, they could come up with a private sector alternative.
Teacher: Now who can tell me the atomic weight of ballognium?
Student: Umm...Delicious
Teacher: Correct...I would also accept snacktacular...
http://stolensoul666.buzznet.com/user/video/2657881/bolognium/ (watch funny Simpsons clip I couldn't figure our how to imbed)
At the rate they're going with cutting social safety netting for the poor and the middle class, the latter of which are losing jobs and fall into the former category, I think the only option left would be for kids to help mom and dad get enough money to pay the bills. In fact Newt, and a number of other conservatives, have already proposed relaxing child labor laws so that inner city kids can get jobs scrubbing toilets to learn the value of hard work, since, according to the right wing outlook, their parents are all obviously unemployed gang bangers and welfare queens. This, they insist, wouldn't possibly be anything other than an after school job. The fact Newt said it'll be a way of undermining janitorial unions might suggest he really wants it to be a full time job for them though. Anyway, whatever their true master plan is, when schools are all privatized, inner city parent's won't be able to pay the high enrollment fees, typical to private schools, and be able to pay rent at the same time.
On another note why private education isn't always superior, when I went to a private school, I learned that the Bible was the infallible and literal word of God, that the earth was 7000 years old, and that dinosaurs roamed the earth with human beings. My education was sufficient in the area of English and Mathematics, but when it came to science, current events, and history, they referenced a Bible verse practically every other sentence. Public schools may suffer in the area of teaching critical thinking skills to children, but there's nothing inherent about private school education that makes them necessarily better in this area either.
Heck, some victims of insufficient private education can't even claim decent instruction in those fundamental area of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some kid I knew, who joined my 6th grade class, was so undereducated by his aunt's tutoring and another private school (that really should have been shut down and condemned) that he was reading at a 2nd grade level. He left before the semester was up, I'm guessing because his guardians kept getting embarrassed when they were pressed for answers by staff about their negligence.
I don't think the solution to American education is to just tear down all the public schools. It isn't even necessarily giving them more funding. I think the key is to explore other teaching models and for American culture, in general, to cultivate a better appreciation for learning and knowledge. We see education as a means to an end, to be a way of making lots of money. This attitude of course preempts the commoditization of education. The educators want to make as much as possible selling the product to the student or the parents of the student, who are willing to pay top dollar so that that the pupil can have knowledge to eventually make a bunch of money and buy all the commodities that are advertised as essential to us for achieving the American dream (big house, cars. vacations, etc). However, I think education is something that should be valued in its own right, not because it can give you some upper edge against everyone else, but because mass enlightenment is necessary for the survival of a free, democratic society.
I don't think the free market model is a healthy way of approaching knowledge. Its very valuable for a whole lot of reasons, but that doesn't mean the majority has to be deprived of it for the benefit of a few. We've put too much emphasis on economic competition, as if that's the end-all argument to history and solution for all our problems, but I fear we may be getting to a point where the competition will be over who's children get to learn how to read and who's kids don't. Its happened in the days of serfdom, in the modern day, third world economies, and I don't see why it couldn't happen here.
Here's the debate I wrote about. I can't find specific, edited clips from the portion I was referring to though.
Here's a great Noam Chomsky interview concerning education.
= new reply since forum marked as read
There was a great local BBS community, and kids had just started getting online (though I was considered the first "juvie" in the community). Only one other family on there homeschooled, so most of the kids I knew went to public school... and many had cars. On Friday nights I attended a live action roleplaying group.
Of course, now I spend a great deal of my time online, so geeky modes of socialization likely did warp me... 
I realized I might have misstated last night after I went to bed, but the most expensive books for any class are $200.... and that's once a year, where the tuition for the same class is $500 (2 0.5 units at $250). The books are separate from the tuition, but I'm sure it's possible to find the same books used like you can for college. There may be additional fees for proctored exams, but those aren't paid to the school. And I miscalculated the value of each semester to their degree. Bad me. By half. It said 20 units were required, and I thought it sounded a bit off, but...
Still, five full units a year is $2500. Add in another $1000 a year for books, and $3500 a year compared to $6000 is still a huge savings over what your state is paying for virtual students.
Edit to add: I wonder if the cost for your state is including the start-up costs to develop curriculum. UNL's been doing their International Study High School for well over a decade.
