> Nope. I have seen that the public schools in California are failing. My friends who are in the public schools say that schools are overfunded and the teachers are incompotent.

What? The staunchness and extremity of your arguments is due to your FRIENDS telling you something that the average student has no clue about anyway? Basing a blanket opinion about the general relationship between government and education on limited hearsay testimony by biased and partially informed kids is not the best way to formulate a political position.

> As I have said before, I see the government as playing a limited role in our lives. I definitely don't think they should interfere with private education, and I think it's unjust for them to make the rest of us pay for public.

Nobody is suggesting they should interfere with private education. It's not unjust to make a country pay for the education of its country's citizens.

> For number 2, of course not. But parents still should have the right to do so. Children are the responsibility of their parents, and their parents should have the right to educate them as they wish. Privately, publically, or by themselves. Parents will not always make the best choice. But the government isn't any wiser. If parents want to homeschool their kids, and the government is convinced that their system of education is better, they still should not overule the authority of the parents.

I'm with you on this one and always was. Homeschooling, as long as it is with a government approved curriculum (the standard of approval being "at least as thorough as the public school education curriculum). Why must the government approve the curriculum? Because otherwise "home schooling" could consist entirely of occasionally teaching one's children to count to one.

> If the parents make poor choices with their children's education, it is a shame. Nevertheless, I believe that parents have the final say in their children's lives, and that the government doesn't.

Can parents KILL their children, too? How about bat them around once in a while? Like you, I am conservatively-minded -- parents should have FAR more say in their children's upbringing than they are currently given, and government and social workers should have FAR less. However, whether a child is educated AT ALL or not is NOT a right I believe parents should have. They SHOULD have the right to decide the MANNER of their education. That's a parents' prerogative, no question. But whether or not they're educated at all or not is a decision upon which many more people than just the parents and child rely upon. As I said, the success or failure of our nation depends upon education, and if you don't believe me, compare the relative qualities of education in successful nations vs. third world countries.

So, getting back to the actual point, government-funded public schools are GOOD, because they allow EVERYONE to be educated. If parents want to pay for private schools, fine. If they want to homeschool, fine. The issue of whether public schools should exist or not has nothing to do with all these fringe issues and smokescreens about California considering a law against homeschooling. In fact, the justness of the government HAVING a role in education has nothing to do with California considering a law against homeschooling.

> For number 1... it does. And certainly, everyone SHOULD be educated. But for the government to forcibly redistribute income to make it happen is unjust.

Nonsense. YOUR LIFE is positively impacted by people you don't even know getting an education. The survival of our country depends on it. Anything that depends on the survival of a country is, by definition, fair game for the government to get involved in.

> The parents who are responsible and personally manage their children's education pay for the education of the children whose parents don't care.

They pay too. That's why it's all paid for with taxes, and it's the single MOST justified tax we have, with the arguable exception of the national defense.

> Children's not getting education is a tragedy, but the government's redistrubting income they way they are now is wrong and has not solved the problem.

Uh. Yes it has. Maybe not perfectly, but a darn sight better than completely privatizing schools and making them optional would.

And since you keep talking about "redistribution of wealth," can we talk about what that means? Where does it redistribute this wealth? The money goes to the public schools. Yeah? Are taxes that fund our national defense "redistribution of wealth"? Are taxes that fund museums and state parks "redistribution of wealth"? I suppose technicality it moves money from one place to another, but what I consider the intended use of that term are things like welfare. Maybe capital gains taxes and minimum wages, if you stretch the meaning a bit. Using the term inappropriately to apply it to all taxes everywhere is an unreasoned hot button type of logic that clouds the issue.

> The problem with the education, like so many other things, has been created by the government. The schools that they have created are inferior to the private institutions that exist.

Uh. No, that's a natural effect of HAVING public and private schools. Any private school that tries to make a go of it and isn't at LEAST as good as public schools isn't going to get any students and will fold. That's not a mishandling of the public school system or its means of funding. It's what will happen in ANY educational system that includes both public and private schools. It would be that way even if your "privately-funded public school" idea were implemented, and I'm still at a loss for how that could ever, in a million years, work.

> Because of what they have done in taxation, they have made it difficult for parents to afford private education and colleges, making for many, public schools the only choice.

Public schools will ALWAYS be the only choice for the majority of the people that only have that as a choice now. All the more reason to make public schools better rather than do away with them.

> Parental accountability. If a parent is not satisfied with the level of education his/her child is getting, have the government take the money it would be spending on the public school education, and give it to the parent to spend on a private school.

There's a good way to get the government out of education.

> Certainly, such a system would decrease public school enrollment. But if what matters most to you is the education of America's youth, why should it matter to you where the money is being spent?
If they are being educated in the best possible way, why should you care whether the education is taking place at a public or private school?

This is a gross oversimplification of the problem, for reasons that have already been explained by others, elsewhere in this thread.

Your ideas work great in a utopian world where parents always make the right decisions, or at least none of the rest of us are affected if they don't, in which school vouchers would actually PAY for a private school education (they don't and never will), and in which the government can be totally free from education and yet still be around to distribute vouchers. Furthermore you're trying to solve problems that aren't problems, and trying to expand our choices by taking the cheapest one away.

I've said my peace on the subject. I find myself repeating arguments that you have yet to address, and that amounts to a waste of time. So I'm done with this. I think your ideas about education are based on an exaggerated estimation of the severity of the problem, an overreaction that has less potential than the current system, an outright danger to the future of the country, and unimplementable in a diverse, non-utopian society.