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I foudn this article and thought it would be good food for thought. Tell me what you think.
If a store sells inferior products or a business gives bad service,
most customers will not come back and that store or business will
eventually go bankrupt. If public schools sell bad education, year
after year, why don't they go bankrupt? Why aren't they shut down?
The
answer is government compulsion. In private schools, if the school does
a bad job educating children, parents will soon take their child out of
that school. If enough parents take their kids out of the school, that
school will go bankrupt. A private school depends on the voluntary
consent and tuition payments of its parent-customers to stay in
business.
Unlike
private schools, public schools are a government-controlled education
system that stays in business through naked compulsion. Local
governments pass laws that give school authorities near-monopoly powers
over our children's education. Compulsory-attendance laws force
children to go to these schools. School taxes force parents to pay for
these schools. Unlike private schools, public schools rarely go out of
business, no matter how bad they are, because they get their
"customers" and their money by force.
Compulsion
rears its ugly head in our public schools in many other ways. State
teacher licensing laws prevent excellent but unlicensed educators or
outside experts from teaching in the schools. Tenure laws make it
almost impossible for school boards to fire incompetent or even
mediocre teachers or principals.
Local
governments force children to go to public schools for six to eight
hours a day, five days a week for up to twelve years, even though these
children might hate public school. School authorities force children to
study subjects that school authorities dictate, even though children
might find these subjects boring or meaningless. Public schools also
force parents to accept teachers that parents might not like or think
are competent.
Many
public schools force children to learn math and reading with teaching
methods that can cripple children's math and reading abilities. Public
schools often subject children to values or sex-education classes that
parents object to. The list goes on and on.
Like
tax-supported prisons, public schools don't shut down because the whole
system rests on a foundation of naked force. Take away
compulsory-attendance laws and compulsory school taxes and it's highly
likely that most public schools would "go out of business."
But
parents don't have to wait for the highly unlikely event of public
schools going out of business in their lifetime. Luckily, parents in
America, unlike those in Germany or many other countries, have the
right to homeschool their children. Parents can also take advantage of
new, low-cost education options available to them right now, such as
low-cost Internet private schools. I go into detail about these new
education options in my book, "Public Schools, Public Menace."
Article Copyrighted © 2005 by Joel Turtel.
About the Author Joel
Turtel is the author of "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public
Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children." Website: http://www.mykidsdeservebetter.com, Email: lbooksusa@aol.com, Phone: 718-447-7348.
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