http://www.topmastersineducation.com/homeschooled/
Saw the above link shared on Facebook recently. Here are my thoughts.
Interesting statistics. Now if only my tax dollars didn't have to pay for public schooling!
Clarification:
1. I know not everyone can or wants to homeschool. It definitely is NOT for everyone.
2. I know many students (like my husband) end up very smart and productive members of society even after attending public school.
BUT
I've been wondering lately why schooling has to be something that the government controls and that our taxes subsidize. (I say "subsidize" because I know that public schools are way under-funded, so we definitely can't say that the government actually PAYS for them.)
Is education a basic human right? Yes, I think so. But so are things like food, shelter, and even the internet (according to the UN). Does the government pay for all of these for every American? No. Now, there ARE programs to help low-income people acquire these things, and I think the same could be done for education if it was all privatized. Which is the case I will try to make over the next few pages.
The cold fact is: American education is FAILING. We all know that... just compare our graduates to the rest of the world. (My husband walked the graduation platform with people who couldn't read. That's right, these are not just illiterate members of society, but illiterate members of society who were actually given a diploma. Sure makes his diploma seem a little less of an accomplishment!)
And I don't think it's the fault of teachers. I have great respect for teachers. In fact, if schools were all privatized, maybe teachers would actually be making the salary they are worth!
My solution? Get rid of public schools in America.
Would there be a higher rate of people keeping their kids out of school altogether if there were no free schools? Probably. People are lazy, and if they had to apply for government aid to get money to send their kids to school, they might not. Are there well-to-do people who just wouldn't make their kids’ education a priority, and if it came down to a choice between paying for school and paying for a new TV, they would choose the TV? Sadly, yes.
But what about the average Joe who DOES care about his kids but simply can’t afford one more expense? In my opinion, it’s just a different mindset. We don’t expect the government to pay for our cars or auto insurance; we just budget so we can have them if we consider that a necessity. If we didn’t EXPECT the government to provide free schooling, we would make it work (and in the long run, it would probably be much cheaper to the average American than actually paying the taxes it costs to fund schools). When you calculate what most parents spend on their child’s public school experience every year (sports, musical instruments, clubs, trips, Hollister clothing…), I have a hard time seeing it being too much of a hardship. I certainly wouldn't want all these things to go away (well, with the possible exception of the last one); I’m just saying that I have faith in American parents’ ability to make a totally private school system work.
What about quality of schools? If we had no formal standardized system, any old Joe could open a school and teach that the world was created on the back of a giant turtle! Personally, I think that letting schools govern themselves according to the types of standards that businesses or non-profits have to abide by is actually a little more comforting than a government-controlled system.
(Note: I don’t know enough about this area to know what kind of parameters would be set in place; but I DO know that there are pretty strict homeschooling laws in many states to ensure that genuine education is taking place, so the same is probably already true of private schools. Though many private schools ARE religious in nature, there could certainly be—and probably already are— many secularist schools as well. The fact that we already have a private school system in America is further proof that public schools may not be as necessary as we think.)
And you can bet that if parents are paying for their own child’s education, they are going to do a little research before they send off their kid! Just look at the waiting list for any good daycare or preschool … parents are paying for that education, and sometimes the pregnancy test is still in the package when parents show up for a tour of a facility. Quality of care/education is usually what sets apart the preschools that stay in business from the preschools that close their doors.
Now, I’m not saying that most parents DON’T do research before sending their kids to public school. I grew up close enough to the border in PA that I knew many kids who went to NY schools based on the fact that they were better schools. I’m just further making my case that the fact that parents CARE about their kids is a huge reason why a totally private school system could be successful. (And it WAS, until public schooling came around. The choice used to be: you either educate your kids yourself, or you pay someone to do it. It's only in recent centuries that we have come to expect public schooling as our "right.")
I know this is lengthy. And I know most people will disagree with me on this. There are ALWAYS going to be ways that the government spends our money that we disagree with, but we just “render to Caesar” and forget about it. This definitely isn’t something that keeps me up at night! I'm not going to stop paying taxes over this issue. It is just something I’ve been thinking about for the past few years (really, ever since a wrote a paper in sociology class about how the American education system is failing) so I was just trying to put it into words.
Thanks for bearing with me and reading it this far! And I don’t fault anyone for having a different view… there are lots of GOOD things about public schools, and lots of good people who teach at public schools, send their kids to them, or attended themselves (case in point: my own husband). On the flip side, you may not like baseball and be bothered by the fact that your government paid for my husband to go to a Rangers game while on Active Duty this summer! Well, this is kind of the same thing. I don’t like that my money is being spent to teach kids evolution rather than giving them scientific facts and letting them learn to decide for themselves. We each have our own opinions about what our tax dollars should and should not be paying for.
(Another Note: many of my homeschool science textbooks DID teach evolution. But even without prompting from Christian parents, as a kid I could see that and say “But this doesn’t make SENSE!” And there are plenty of homeschoolers and private-schoolers who DO believe the theory of evolution, so don’t “worry” that Darwinian teaching would completely disappear from society if there were no public schools. Teaching of evolution is just one example of things that I disagree with about public schools, which is why I mentioned it above alongside the baseball game example.)
And don’t get me wrong; I said earlier that I don’t even think all private schools should be religious… I just think that schooling should be something YOU have to pay for, rather than the government, which essentially gives you more of a choice in your child’s education than: “Well, I send them to public school because I can’t afford anything else.”
This is becoming just a string of seemingly disconnected footnotes, but that's why I used the word "ramblings" in the title. I think I mentioned earlier that I don't fault people who send their kids to public schools. I have plenty of friends and family who do it. And if I didn't personally have the desire to homeschool, I might even send my own kids to public school. The system is there, so you might as well take advantage of it (our family takes advantage of plenty of free government programs because, after all, they are there, and we pay our taxes, so why not?). I'm just writing all this to say that in my case, from a philosophical, economical, and (in most cases) educational standpoint, I can't say that public schooling is a good thing.
The biggest question parents may ask about a desire to make all schooling privatized might be: "But why should I have to PAY to send my kids to school?"
I could turn that question around and ask: "But why should I have to pay to send YOUR kids to school?"
In conclusion (finally!), I know there's really nothing to be done about it, so for the most part I just keep quiet. The public school system is too far entrenched in our society to ever go away, or even have any major changes, so I guess that makes it a "necessary evil". This is all just something to think about.
Thanks for reading.
