I wasn't going to get involved in a thread about the American school system. But now I will. And even though I'm actually responding to one of Mark N's posts (actually #25841), I'm going to post /right here/ so that everybody can see it. Because this issue keeps coming up in this thread, and now it's time to talk about it directly.

Mark N argues that the government should quit meddling with individuals' educations. He said, "It's not the place of our government to solve everyone's problems." Interestingly, you can parse this statement two ways. Mark might have just said that it's not the place of the government to solve all of the problems that are of concern to anyone. Or, he might have just said that the government can solve any problem /except/ for problems that /everyone/ cares about.

The latter statement is quite cynical, but in principal, I believe, also quite false. Indeed, it is the /purpose/ of government to solve those problems that are of concern to everyone in a nation. And, the founding fathers both of your nation and mine (I'm Canadian) decided that one thing that was of concern to everyone was education. They decided that every American and every Canadian should have a right to a decent education, and that the government should set up an education system to ensure that this takes place. The government doesn't just set up schools; it also decides on what should be taught: it sets curriculums, and prepares examinations to set standards of education throughout the country, so that both public and private schools must give all students at least a certain degree of compentency. The government must set these standards if your country is to have any sort of universal education system in which at least a certain base amount of subject material must be covered.

But we're not talking about standards right now, right? We're talking about schools. Mark said, in post #25820, "The Public schools in America stink." He thinks the public school system should "fail", should be thrown by the wayside so that private schools which have more "competition" can run the school system instead. And it seems to me that there are a number of Rinkydinks who support this position. So let's talk about it!

There are, it seems to me, two arguments for replacing the public schooling system with private schools. The first is the "money" argument and the second is the "beurocrats suck" argument. Let's talk about the "money" argument first.

Here's how Mark N. puts the money argument: He says governments can only create a public education system "at the cost of redistrubting prosperity to those who "need" it more, and by restricting our freedoms". Mousie said essentially the same thing in a different way: "I pay higher taxes ... yet I get none of the public education benefits whatsoever." Essentially, the argument goes, in public schools /everyone/ pays for education, while in private schools, only the parents of children using the system would have to pay. Isn't it more fair if only the people using the system have to pay for it?

The response to this argument is essentially the same as the response I gave to Mousie in my post "Re: Taxes" but I'll say it again to get the point across. You are arguing that people should only pay for services that they use -- and that people should /have/ to pay for the services that they /do/ use. To expand the concept, this means that you should only have to pay for public parks if you use them, so there should be a fee for public parks. You should only have to pay for police if you need them, so only victims of a crime or people at risk should have to pay for police. You should only have to pay for roads when you drive on them, so roads should all be toll roads. Saying /any/ of these things is the same, in principal, as saying that you should only have to pay for a schooling system if you have children who need an education.

Well, why not? It's a viable way to run a country. In fact, it would be easy. Have private businesses, rather than governments, make the parks, and then charge people competative rates to use them. Have these same businesses make the roads, and then charge people rates to drive on them. Similar "protection agencies" could provide police protection for anyone who needed it and could pay for it. People dream about such a system. It even has a name: economically, this is "pure capitalism"; politically, it is "anarchy".

So why don't we live in such a system, where education is paid for only by those who need it? Well, because we don't live in a pure capitalist anarchy, that's why. But let me put it another way. In a pure capitalist anarchy, there is no such thing as "rights". Everything you have, you /earn/. People do not have a guaranteed right to property, for example -- but they can hire a protection agency to protect what is theirs. People do not have a guaranteed right to roads, or decent health care, or to sanitary food in restaurants -- but if people pay enough money to the corporations that build roads, or to corporations that own hospitals, or to organizations that enforce private health standards on restaurants, then they can /earn/ these things. And what about the people who don't have enough money to afford those things today, in Canada and in the United States, are considered basic rights? Well, if they worked harder, maybe then they could afford them, couldn't they!

Now think about it. Is that the sort of country in which you'd like to live, in which no government protects your rights -- which corporations, instead, are paid by people who can afford it to create their own security and standard of living? For some people, this is exactly what they want. But in any case, this is what you are on the road to creating if you chose to replace your public school system with private schools.

Why? Because your government and mine has decided that a right that /every/ American and Canadian citizen should have is a right to a decent education. Every American and every Canadian, no matter what race or what situation in life, will learn to read, will learn basic arithmatic, and if they are able and interested enough (that is, if they have the grades), to go on to pursue higher studies in more advanced math and sciences. Every Canadian and every American gets that opportunity as a right and if you create a system in which only students going to private schools get a decent education then you create a system in which the poor are denied this right.

Why are all Canadians and Americans given this right? An old mantra, frequently quoted and hardly ever thought about, is that "children are our future". The children of the United States of America will grow up to be the businessmen of the United States of America, the leaders of the United States of America, the innovators of the United States of America, the foreign ambassadors of the United States of America, the water sanitizers of the United States of America, and even the toothpaste manufacturers of the United States of America. You want your businessmen to be successful so that America is competitive in the global marketplace; you want your leaders to be intelligent so that America is represented by intelligent men and women; you want your innovators to be innovative so that American industry has an edge on other nations and so that you can create technology to fulfill needs. You want your foreign ambassadors to create good foreign relations. You want clean water. You want tasty toothpaste. These things are of concern to /you/, and to every American, not just the parents of today's children. Successful American businessmen improve the /American/ economy, not just their parents' economy. And in order to be good leaders or good businessmen or good innovators, the children of America need to know how to read and write. They need the knowledge and the wisdom that the leaders and businessmen and innovators of today and yesterday can impart, to give them an edge; to keep them competitive against foreign markets. They only way we know how to impart this information in our society is through some sort of education system. And so it is in /your/ interest and to /your/ benefit that /every/ American and not just your children are given a decent education. That's what the founding fathers of Canada and America, and Great Britain and New Zealand and Italy in case Tubba or Brunnen_G or Andrea are reading this, realized. And that's why you have to pay for the education of other Americans.

There's another way to look at this. When you go to another country, and you say you're an American citizen, that /means/ something. One of the things it means is that you know how to read and write, you know how to do math and you understand at least the basic principals of science. It means you have tools and skills that make you competitive against people from other countries. Just being an American citizen /means/ that because these tools and skills are guaranteed to you by your government. And that's what I think you want it to mean. I want "I'm a Canadian" to mean "I'm smart and I'm talented", and not "I'm from a country that only bothers with rich kids and lets the poor be stupid and illiterate if they can't be bothered to get a job and pay for some one to teach them to read." I want my country to be respected.

Mark N. says, "Freedom means freedom to fail. If a parent chooses not to educate their children properly, the government can't step in there and say otherwise." But in this case, responsibility is the opposite of freedom. Since we do not live in a pure capitalist anarchy, the government /can/ step in there and say otherwise, thank you very much. And in the case of Canada and the United States, the government -- and, hopefully, the citizens of each country -- have the /courage/ to say to people who don't think they can be bothered to get an education, "You are an American citizen and you have a duty to help to improve your country and your people and you will /not/ fail!" Because one American who does fail lets /every/ American down.

It saddens and angers me that people should suggest that the government of a nation should not be responsible for the education of a nations' children. The government should not shirk its responsibility to its future by handing it to private schools. It must provide a schooling system for every American child, one that every child, not only those who can afford it, can attend.

But, is the government best suited to administer such a system? This brings us to the second argument for a private schooling system, the one I have termed "beurocrats suck". Mark N. says, "The problems that plague the public schools are incomptence and lack of accountability." Basically, the argument is that the government will never be able to create an effective public school system. So therefore, private schools should do it instead, because that's the only way we're ever going to get any decent schools at all.

Well, Mark, believe it or not, I think you're wrong. I think that a government /could/ create a decent public education system, one that would effectively give American children the tools that they need to survive in the future. A system that would encourage children to learn and be creative, that wouldn't continually bore them and insult them with repetitive and useless tests and ridiculous, frivilous assignments. A system that spends money wisely and effectively, without a great deal of overhead beurocracy that sucks something like half of the money in the schooling system (source: some bitter comment a teacher of mine made once).

I think the government /could/ do this. I just think they /didn't/.

The main reasons they didn't is that beurocracy is tedious and change is slow and a perfect education system is hard to design. But they are trying. That's why every public school in Canada now has a connection to the Internet, the first nation to be able to make that claim. That's why at a lower-class public school in Hudson, Massachusetts, your American government is experimenting with new technologies for learning, including a modified Palm Pilot with sensors that allow students to cost-effectively perform real environmental field studies in surrounding areas (source: Popular Science, November 2000). So your politicians are trying.

I don't think we can afford to give up on them just yet. We can't afford to give up on public school because we /need/ it for the future of our countries, because we need to protect the right of every Canadian and American citizen to have the mental tools that they will need in the future. It's just that important.

So what do we do? Well, we do what we have always done in our democracy. Complain -- a lot. In the newspaper and on television, when you get the chance. On the Internet, when you don't. Write your congressmen.

Change happens. Slowly, but it happens.

-Space "Soapbox? What soapbox?" Bar