Cheese and Crackers: Comments
Dear lord, think off all the unemployed beaurocrats.
Jordan, you're getting more idealistic than the liberals you rail against.
While Jacoby has some useful ideas, the actual implications of it boil down to the fact that many parents simply shouldn't and wouldn't choose the proper path for their children. There's a reason we have a one size fits all education for younger students and it grows gradually more concentrated as kids age, starting with math groupings by ability in 3rd or 4th grade and ending in choosing majors in college. By choosing a path in private sector schools for the children, their being pigeon holed into specific oppurtunities, while neglecting others. Further, beyond simply oppurtunies, primary and secondary education, in my view, should introduce valid points of view (what constitutes valid is obviosuly open to debate, like the examples Jacoby mentioned) but not try push students into forming an opinion on them. That is for college or later in life once one's self is more mature to fully reason out the consequences. Of course, people will form opinions, whether from their parents at home or reading newspapers. The answer is not to send a child to school where only one thing will be emphasized, be it athletics or evolution, because they will be pre-disposed later in life, when they are better equipped to judge, against other valid points/arguments/opinions etc.
Shit, the man you and I put so highly on a pedestal, Tucker, often talks about people my age and younger needing to figure out who they are by trying many different things and imitating them. That, the very essence of learning and self-discovery, wouldn't be possible without the options publicly controlled education does.
An basic education ideally should serve to level the playing field for all students on graduation. Of course, it doesn't (i.e. suburban vs inner-city schools; some have money to continue onto college and others don't), but it is an excellent system in striving to achieve those goals.
Next time you post, I would ask you to consider the full depth of a petty argument some op-ed writer at a second rate paper brings up. His argument has far more implications that he considered; next time don't just enthusiastically nod your head and give a Tiger Woods fist pump while linking it.
I am a product of a charter school and very happy I never went to a "cookie-cutter school"
I have to agree totally with Jordan here. Especially on education, as I was fortunate enough to go to a charter school and learn without the horror of public education. For once I was pushed to learn, to read the great texts and decide ideas for myself.
As at my past school, it was thought that elementary prepares you with the basics that you need to know. Jr. High is mean for arguing. As it is a natural thing for these students to really start to argue with just about everything they come across. Here you put them up against great texts. Then in High School you give them all the great works, the Iliad to Nietzsche, and let them decipher the texts for themselves. Find out what each of them believe. Then college is just defending all that you have built up.
Actually, the Federal Reserve is a collection of private banks that works at the behest of the government, and they regulate money supply and interest rates, so its kinda already somewhat privatized.
HH
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