| Public School and Society |
Public School and Society
In our social system, we often just take for granted that the way our educational system set up is the way it should be without question. But if you look at society across the ages, turning your children over to strangers without question to educate them in ways that are not your own is far from the normal way most societies bring their young up to adult level of knowledge and skill.
If anything, the two models that most resemble the way families educate their children historically is home school or private school. It's only the advent of large cities and a move away from the agricultural lifestyle that brought on the phenomenon of huge public schools as we know them. As recently as the generation before The Baby Boomers, public education was handled at the local level where the local community hired a teacher and brought the children together for basic instructions under the watchful eye of the local school board.
Parents were far more the authority under that system and the idea that the teacher or the school administration had more to say about what your child would be taught than you do was as ridiculous as the idea that the grocery clerk could tell you what food you could or could not buy.
This early model of private school is more in step with the way most of our social support systems work. We by and large maintain a capitalist society where people are allowed to do work for us as long as they conform to our expectations. The employee doesn't tell the employer what they can expect and the employer is not denied access to the process as it often the case in public schools.
Now to say that public schools "kidnap" our children and "indoctrinates" them into some strange alien way of thinking is overly dramatic. To be practical, most local schools systems are looking after the best interest of the children. The basic education of the kids in the core disciplines (reading, writing and arithmetic) still are the reason for existing for most public schools.
But there are abuses that crop up in virtually every public school system that often aggravate parents. The very fact that the private school movement has been such a success is a testimony to the fact that public schools are not serving the needs of all of the children and their families who pay taxes for such service so those parents must seek other alternatives for their children.
It really is unfair if you think about it because of the almost "socialist" way that public schools are run. Funding for public schools is usually enabled by taxation. But many who pay into the system do not benefit from it because they do not have children and they don't have a say in whether they approve of the system or want to see it changed. Furthermore, if a family decides to take their child out of the public schools and pay for private school, they have to continue to support the public schools with their taxes and in effect pay for two school systems, one of which failed to serve their needs.
Looking at the differences between public and private schools in this way doesn't solve anything. For the time being, the situation is not likely to change. The most important thing is that your child gets the best education possible and the decision you must make between public and private schools for your kid's sake must look away from the unfairness of the system as it works today. But it is helpful to look at the system this way so we can work as a society to make things better over time. That is our job as parents and as citizens as well.
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Word Count 642
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A Place for Your Gifted Child When you recognize that your child is gifted in some particular area of talent ...
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A Place Where You Cannot Protect Your Child There are a lot of reasons that parents consider pulling their kids ...
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Becoming a Snob When you talk to a lot of parents, its amazing how many consider the public school system ...
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Big Schools Big Programs Comparing the good things that can be offered between school programs can get difficult. Picking a ...
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Changing Schools from Your Child's Perspective There is one thing that is a bit strange about the process we, go ...
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God and School It has not always been a problem to have a religious faith and still attend public school. ...
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Greatness and Public School Depending on the size of your community the number of kids who might be in public ...
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Hype Versus Reality in Private Schools Private schools function from an entirely different economic base than public schools. Because private ...
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Interviewing Schools You are an adult. And when adults make big decisions in life, they have good reasons. And deciding ...
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Money and Education We like to think of public education of our children as a pure science that is populated ...
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On Not Letting School Administrators Push You Around If you have found yourself outraged, frustrated and feeling a little paranoid ...
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Protecting Your Child's Love of Learning Sometimes for parents who see their children come home from public school angry and ...
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Public School and Society In our social system, we often just take for granted that the way our educational system ...
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Reading, Writing and Arithmetic There seem to be a lot of reasons for sending your child to public school depending ...
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Special Schools for Special Kids If you are a parent of a special needs child, you know something that the ...
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Taking Control of Moral Education People remove their children from public school and move to private schools for a lot ...
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Teaching Subjects or Teaching Students Teaching school is as much a calling as it is a job. And in fact ...
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The Dilemma of Finding a Good Christian School Christian people often feel a bit isolated in society. And for a ...
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The Government Wants Private Schools to go Away When you are trying to make an objective decision about whether to ...
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The Legalized Abduction of Children It's almost inconceivable but it happens to every single family in the country every day. ...
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The Rights of Parents Sometimes it seems that once you drop your children off at the door of the school ...
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They Want to Drug Your Child! Anyone who has an interest in what is going on in the world of ...
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When Fear is a Part of Life at School You can probably think back on some of your favorite classes ...
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When Schools Turn into Spys What do you pay the school to do for your child? You pay the school ...
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Who Holds the Schools Accountable? Perhaps the biggest difference between public and private school is the system of accountability. Children ...
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Why Private School for Your Child? There are notable differences in what private schools offer from the public school environment. ...
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The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in
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This site
is a common sense guide to Public School and Society. In practical advice websites,
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