Public education in this country is a disaster. Proper home schooling is the only alternative for the failed system of what are really "government schools" in which tax-paying parents have little say in what their children are able to learn. It is dumbed down, geared to a left-wing political agenda, and uses tenure to give job security to incompetents who have no real desire to see students achieve-they only want the bloated paychecks and benefits.
Forget Big Oil and Enron; public education is the most corrupt, self-serving monopoly in this nation. In New York State alone the annual budget is $15 billion, and the UFT is always whining for more money-no wonder their local leader is Randi Weingarten. Where is that money going? Not to education; with a budget greater than the GNP of most developing nations, we still have students who can't do basic math or read an M&M. Perhaps the three major flaws are 1.)the lack of accountability on the part of the schools-they get paid if kids pass or fail-and they blame this on not having enough money; 2.)the lack of competition from charter schools and parental choice via vouchers; and 3.)the lack of discipline in classrooms that makes learning impossible for even the most motivated of students.
1.)In NYC Mayor Guiliani made an attempt to reform the failed school system, along with his other reforms, but had to leave that to his ineffectual successor, Mayor Bloomberg. Bloomberg is more concerned with stopping adults from smoking than he is with having kids get an education. Like most politicians, he is under the sway of the reprehensible teacher's unions who have not only had functional morons getting tenure, but child molesters and drug dealers. If NYC education were a private industry, held accountable by its trustees, it would have folded two generations ago.
2.) What's wrong with school competition? The only people who are afraid of competition are those who are trying to sell a shoddy, inferior product. That's the public schools-they know charter schools outdistance them, and private schools-religious or secular-put them to shame. Certainly it is not because the charter or private schools have $15 billion a year to play around with! Does it not seem strange that of all these people in the public school bandwagon who talk about what a great job they are doing, NOT ONE OF THEM HAVE THEIR OWN KIDS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS? Of course, with their bloated salaries, they can afford private schools and quality education for their kids. "It's good enough for your kid" (the failed public school system) "but not for mine." That in and of itself speaks VOLUMES.
3.)DISCIPLINE, not DOLLARS, is what is needed in public schools. The great success of Catholic and other religious schools is not, I think, the element of religious belief but the system of DISCIPLINE. Rice High School in Harlem has a sign on the front door: THE STREET ENDS HERE. Their motto: THE ONLY PLACE SUCCESS COMES BEFORE WORK IS IN THE DICTIONARY. Poor public school kids probably don't even know what a dictionary is or how to use it! No, to hear the liberal advocates of government schools, such terminology would be considered a violation of civil rights. In a Brooklyn school two years back the Board of Education put in metal detectors because so many students were coming in with knives and guns. There was a hue and cry that this was a violation of civil rights and racist! I suppose we must take them out of the airports as well?
Imagine trying to run a private business where the employees could goof off and when the boss reprimanded them, they could say, "F- you", and not be penalized? That's what you have in public schools, and the egg heads wonder why teachers can't teach these kids? Punishment has to be real, not limp-noodle suspension, which malcontents see as a paid vacation. If you don't institute genuine discipline-not a problem, you notice, with homeschooling-then our tax dollars are simply going toward "prison prep".
Yes, God bless homeschooling. My best friend from college and his wife have been homeschooling their eleven children (yes, they're Irish Catholics!) and these young people at freshmen year are already reading at college and graduate study level. As for socialization, that's not a problem since these children are very active in their community in sports and other endeavors.
Yes, yes, homeschooling-imagine what our country would be like if someone like Abraham Lincoln had to get his education from a NYC public school? I shudder to think what we are wasting in student potential in order to satisfy the callous greed of people like the UFT.