Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Ah... So because people are too stupid to make good choices for themselves, lets take their choices away. It's for their own good!
Suddenly home schooling and private schools are illegal?
Irrelevant. I could make the exact same point towards any curriculum requirements in public school. You want your kid to be taught comprehensive sex ed, well... private schools and home schooling aren't illegal, is they? It's kinda arbitrary, but as long as only one can be taught in any single school at any given time, the public is going to fight over it. The fact that any side could obtain exactly the curriculum they want for their kids via private schools or home schooling is pretty meaningless.
What is meaningful, on the other hand, is pointing out that as long as our tax dollars are funding our public education, there is always going to be an added opportunity cost to utilizing any other form of education which is not funded with that money. This creates pretty strong economic forces which result in most children attending public school, even when their parents aren't terribly happy about it. Some form of voucher system would at least eliminate that opportunity cost by ensuring that every parents got their tax dollars worth in education dollars for their child, while giving them choices about what school they attend.
Quote:
But bang that "Liberty!" drum harder. After all, you don't have to hear anyone else's opinion when you're whaling away on a drum
I'm reading, not hearing.
And forgive me, but when someone justifies deliberately structuring our public school system in a way so as to minimize choices parents by declaring that they'd make dumb choices anyway, I'm going to bring up the whole liberty thing. What's amazing to me is that said statement wasn't more roundly dismissed when it was made. It *should* be a statement that is anathema to anyone living in a society based on the principles of liberalism. Sometimes, it scares me how few people know what those principles are, much less recognize when someone proposes something that violates them.