Why do we leave education in the government's hands?

[Philip R]

Most of those who latch onto it in government(because they think government, and by extension they,know what's best for you) are the liberals, and these are the ones who came up with this "outcome based education" and this is why many people don't know the difference between there, their, and they're, just to name one. We need to make private schools more accessible, and restrict the Department of Education's role to a disciplinary capacity in case of educator misconduct, and a quartermaster role, making sure schools get enough of their supplies, and get them on time. Teachers learn the facts they need to teach the kids; they don't need to dumb them down. If anything they should be challenging recalcitrant students to succeed, not dragging the rest of the class down with them. For LD or otherwise disabled students there are special schools, which have teachers especially taught to teach these students in a way best calculated to help them learn as they need to.Bin, I half agree and half disagree; exactly how are we "supposed to think"? The idea that the liberals think they have a lock on this is part of my point. Conservatives don't have ALL the answers either. My point is, just teach kids the facts. and they'll think for themselves.Wisdom seeker, can you condense what you're trying to say? After half of that I lost you.

 

[!Craz? Cali. Babe E8!]

Because they have taken it upon themselves to deny us the choice of how to educate or of how to be educated!It's much easier to control the populace when no one understands how the populace is supposed to be or what they are supposed to think.

 

[Philippe D]

You ask a very disturbing question. I have read most of Ayn Rand's philosophy of rational objectivism and her novels. I especially liked Atlas Shrugged and its illustration of what collectivism does to a society. I think collectivism is ok inside the family and church and I think schools are a natural collectivist hive too but they should not be. The most neglected minority in schools, and society for that matter, is the individual. The government is full of collectivists who have capitalized on the families desire to have a school that takes care of the families natural collectivist duties of child rearing. In the process the U.S.Department of Education has consciously recognized that families have abdicated responsibility for their children to the school system, and in turn, the school system has consciously chosen to remove the concept of entreprenerial spirit, individual initiative and free enterprise and replace it with the philosophy that collectivism outside the family, in the world at large is tenable. (When it has been discredited throughout human history where ever it has been tried.) The result has been product of children that cannot "compet" in a global economy. There are more honor students in the People's Republic of China than there are childtren in all of North America. The U.S Department of Education needs to be completely overhauled, starting with a national school year which is either longer or year round. It will be very difficult to achieve this objective of major reform. The U.S. Departement of Education is full of collectivists of all varieties. The group think of relying on government rather than individual initiative is very dangerous to a society that has embraced free enterprise in the past.Now our society is demonizing individual initiative, free enterprise and small businesses which make our society function at least partially better than any other society on earth. Our system of democracy and laws will decide if individual rights are to be crushed or not. The best way to start to fight this outrageous travesty of intellectual and moral honesty is to remove your children from public schools if you can afford to, or stay very involved in their education if you can't. I just finished running for school board without a win and less than 500 people turned out to vote in a population of 20,000 plus in my district. The winner received 180 votes. I received 123, next one got 96, then 23 then 17. Pretty pathetic if you ask me. But I still recommend that you get involved. You can't bitch if you don't. Good luck. I only had $1,000 to run my campaign and I almost won.I got myself on tv and in the newspapers and showed up at the right meetings and this made up for a lot of lack in my finances. The winner out spent me on road and lawn signs and this is what sold the votors.