Private schools would teach specific marketable skills. Parents would decide which schools to send their children to. Not the Common Core, cookie-cutter, treat all students alike socialistic approach used by public education.

There never was nor will there ever be a society in every individual has the exact same things as every other member of that society. If you think me wrong, please provide evidence.

From my post above "
Just as we have chevys and mercedes in cars, we would have the same in private schools" Is there enough revenue to support the car companies? Do most "poor" people have cars? Or cell phones, or TVs or computers?

You act as though everyone is at poverty or below. go check out the school portion of your personal property taxes. Eventually the best schools would rise to the top of the heap and you'd have to pay more to attend there or go on a stipend. People like other people educated. Companies like skilled workers. There is natural incentive to want to help educate those at poverty or below. Like Speaker Gingrich said, a high schooler can be a janitor or work in the cafeteria. My freshman year of college I worked in the cafeteria to help pay my tuition. Don't look for cliffs where there aren't

You express your thoughts most clearly. It is appriciated.

Those who seek ignorance deserve their fate! Those truly incapable physically to learn or support themselves are few enough in numbers for the benevolence of charities to care for.

Not true. There is infinite resources available to teach children basic skills and any other skills you or they may be interested in learning. Parents need to take the initiative and see the importance of teaching their children, and teaching themselves in the process. Like anything else in life...if there's a will, there's a way.

Many schools today teach American history as if begins with the Civil War. Thanks for the link

Here Here k. Do you wonder why in the midst of the information society, there is soo much ignorance?

The concept of public education is founded on the principle that government is the best educator of your children. The fact that some of us has benefited from it does not change this, nor the evil that is at the source of this concept. I count myself fortunate that I went to a school where the teachers were fantastic and at a time when intellectual curiosity was considered an asset.
At the heart of public education, however, is indoctrination. Let’s not forget this. It is most evident in the fact that school children are forced, day after day for 12 years, to begin their day parroting “The Pledge of Allegiance.” They are never told why, nor where this pledge came from. They grow up thinking that saying the Pledge is some kind of holy ritual of patriotism, when, in fact, it is not.
If you asked your garden-variety American “conservative” if he would welcome his children reciting something that was initiated by a proclaimed socialist, you’d receive an indignant response. And yet, that is exactly what the Pledge is. It has nothing to do with the Founding Fathers nor with the founding of this nation and its ideals; it was an invention of the 1890s and was instilled in our schools primarily as a tool of indoctrination. At the beginning, the salute was made with the right arm uplifted. That was changed to a reverent hand-over-the-heart when the Nazis co-oped the salute.
When I became aware of the origins of the Pledge in the late 1980s, I lost all respect for this ritual and became an advocate against its use. It is only one form of indoctrination that children receive in school, but it is the most obvious. American history, as it is taught in the schools, is another form of indoctrination. We are taught that the “great” presidents are those who pushed their powers beyond the Constitution, who involved their countrymen in war, and who inserted government into the economic and personal transactions of so-called “free” individuals. Children grow up taking it for granted that there is no area of life in which government doesn’t have authority. They are taught that there is no problem that government can’t solve.
The purpose of public education is not to teach children how to think independently, but to teach them how to be docile, obedient, and unquestioning citizens of the State. How evil is that?
Here is a timely link to the Future of Freedom Foundation, and the latest blog of its founder, Jacob Hornsberger: http://fff.org/2013/09/12/the-most-borin...
Don’t question the underlying evil of an institution just became some people manage to derive some good from it.

weren't schools initially just to educate the masses just enough to be productive worker bees?

if my property tax portion for schools was in my pocket I guarantee you I would pay a little extra for set asides for the less fortunate. private schools educate for much less cost per student than public schools.
we live in an information society. even poor families have some access to the internet. Libraries give away books when they receive new editions. Magazines are in every waiting room. You can learn to read by your teacher having nothing more than a stick and dirt. People are naturally inquisitive, looking at the world outside of their parents' eyes is the norm not the exception. Anyone at any age seeking knowledge, usually finds some

"...and do it without the parents having to pay anything?" You raise a broader issue here than education. I beleive that welfare is the new plantation. Instead of a racist slave owner, we have racist bureaucrats who serve the same function, namely to keep the poor from rising up the economic ladder. All parents pay for "free" Public Education if not directly by taxes then by lost economic opportunities.

Which is why I think a combination of home-schooling and private schools would work best for the children. Just as we have chevys and mercedes in cars, we would have the same in private schools.

Maybe too many of us. There are millions of parents in the USA who have accepted our responsibilities.

Yup. Just what Marx and Dewey wanted to happen.

Thank you for your post. Local control seems to be the key but with Common Core and everything else being pushed on us these days I doubt that we will see it again. Best of luck to you.

"One presenter to my district defined an idiot as someone who is more interested in their own good than the good of the community"

For what it is worth, paragraph 2 of John Dewey's My Pedigogic Creed reads in part "Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs." The full version can be found at http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm

Ah, yes. Unfortunately, the public education system has become a testing ground for governmental interference in familial matters, intrusive to an alarming degree. Even though my daughter is a senior in HS and has attended this school since 2007, we still get forms sent from the school inquiring as to our financial, working, and domicile status. Whether her mother and I are married or not, how often we may have moved, whether her mother or I are involved in agricultural or fishery work. These things are none of their damn business. Our child goes to school clean, well dressed and well behaved. She is a B+ student and has taken a leadership role in establishing an Art Club for students so inclined. That is what they should be interested in, not that other claptrap. (Funny, that word has taken on a new life in here). Anyway, I have three nephews who were homeschooled. All are extremely intelligent, one of whom has offered full- ride scholarships to do his medical research doctorate at Rice University (for one) and others. So far as I know, he is a well-adjusted kid, able to socialize with the best of them.

"Errors, rather than eradicated are reinforced" Are these errors being eradicated in the schools?

"People raised at home, trained at home and educated at home have a very narrow scope of the world" Do you really beleive that the Public Schools are proving a wider scope? They are teaching non-reason..

That's the assumption, but it doesn't prove to be true. As for the having to work excuse. We all have to earn a living. This is about priorities. Do you want your kids taught that wrong is right and right is wrong, up is down etc?? Kids are their parents' responsibility and it's their job to make sure they are properly educated (just like being properly fed). There are other and better ways to get interaction with peers. Being part of a herded blob is not conducive to learning. It becomes assimilate or be an outcast. Outcast for being an individual who doesn't want to conform. Everyone must comply. blaht.