Curt Howland wrote:
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Mumia W wrote:
Yes, they are. I was educated in a public school.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Apr-16-Sun-2006/opinion/6593902.html
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Apr-23-Sun-2006/opinion/6595142.html
==========Quote
"Not only was private education in demand, but it was quite
successful. Literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91
and 97 percent between 1800 and 1840, the years prior to compulsory
schooling and governmental provision and operation of education. In
the South during the same time period, the rate grew among the white
population from between 50 and 60 percent to 81 percent. (Sheldon
Richman, Separating School & State, p. 38.) ..."
This year, by comparison, a study by the American Institutes for
Research found that more than 75 percent of students at 2-year
colleges and more than 50 percent of students at 4-year colleges in
2006 "lack the skills to perform complex literacy tasks ... ." These
are today's college kids, mind you -- supposedly the cream of the
American crop, youths on whose schooling our unionized government
propaganda camps have squandered more treasure per pupil than any
other society in history.
===========End Quote
Your quotes don't help your argument for two reasons. You're not
comparing public to private, and the people making those statements
don't begin to envision what society would be like without public
schooling.
This is another part of the Right Wing mantra: "It doesn't outperform
the private sector, so it should be scrapped."
Where both Social Security and public education are concerned, the
purpose is *not* to outperform the private sector. If they tried to do
that, the private companies would scream bloody murder.
The purpose of the public programs is to ensure that *something* is
there for the middle class and poor. It doesn't have to be gold-plated.
The purpose of public education is to prevent the formation of a sharp,
two-class system, where an elite class understands how the society is
run, and everyone else knows so little that they have to accept the
decisions of the elite.
When this happens, it is absolutely guaranteed that the elite will
structure society so that they will forever be the elite, and no one
else will ever be given the opportunity to understand how the society is
run or why it's run the way it is.
It would be like Medieval times, where an Aristocracy ruled, and the
peasants, by both education and law, had no choice but to accept their
decisions. A system like this can last 500 or a thousand years.
The purpose of public education was to ensure that this could never
happen again.
The purpose of public education in America, was to destroy the power of
the old aristocracy of the South, and to fertilize the formation of a
new white middle class that would never allow themselves to be dominated
by an elite group of plantation owners ever again. (It worked).
The purpose of public education is not to compete directly against
private education. It is to teach the masses how to see it when their
rulers are about to give them the big shaft. It worked. In 2004, at
least 55 million Americans saw the big shaft coming and tried to stop it.
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