I think that we all can take away a few big lessons from the recent turmoil in Wisconsin – it is time to end public school education!
First, there is no fair way to pay for public education. The system is rigged for those families with many children living in small homes or, even worse, renting apartments. These families pay no or just a small amount of real estate taxes that are used to fund our schools. Why should two families living side-by-side in identical homes pay the same real estate taxes when one family has five children and the other couple a single child? Why should people with no children have to pay school taxes at all? We need to find a more equitable system.
Second, the hope and dreams that a quality education are suppose to provide are myths in today’s world of few job opportunities. Today’s curriculum is burdensome and irrelevant for providing the skills and knowledge to succeed in the world of today. We teach two years of pre-Algebra and then a year of Algebra I followed by Algebra II. I have yet to use the “x” and “y” to help solve a problem in the real world. How about trigonometry? We can sine that one to the dumpster, too.
And science education, where has that gotten us? We produce a bunch of liberal scientists that take federal grant money only to try and convince us that there is global warming. Or we pay scientists, again with federal and state grant money, to study the behavior of rats and monkeys and then try to educate our children with the theory of evolution. Science got us to the moon and what did we get for those billions of dollars spent? Tang.
History? Forget about it. We spend more time teaching American history in our schools than we do teaching Algebra. American History is taught every year in grades 1 through 8, although much of that time focuses on Thanksgiving. Our kids are taught social studies , whatever that is, in the ninth grade maybe one year of world history in tenth and then back to American history for the junior and senior years. And what do we get for it? We have politicians who you would think would be experts on American history, and yet nationally recognized politicians stumble as they try to recall history to make a point. John Boehner tells us he is reading the Constitution and then reads from the Declaration of Independence. Michelle Bachman tells us that the Founding Fathers, led by John Quincy Adams (who we know was not a Founding Father) eliminated slavery. Sarah Palin cannot recite a single decision handed down by the Supreme Court which she might disagree with. I can bet that both these politicians got A’s in their history classes.
We, as a society, must move to a system of home schooling. Only the parents really know what is essential for their children to learn and they can be responsible for passing along this knowledge. We do not need elected school boards dictating that kids learn subjects that we see as totally irrelevant or contrary to our beliefs. No one will tell us we cannot teach the Bible in our homes. I can assure you there will be much fewer discipline problems with home schooling and we will not have to hire a police force to guard the doors of education. Think of the savings on the federal school lunch program. Of course, those families that are apathetic to their own childrens’ education can waste their hard-earned dollars sending their kids to private schools. That is what we mean by ” free choice”.
By ridding ourselves of public education, we immediately go along way in solving the state and local budget problems. We immediately make education more relevant and give control back to our kids to the family. And finally, we will not have to deal with the divisive teachers’ strike in our community every two years.
H O W A R D S B E N D 
But who will we blame when our children aren’t educated. We need just enough poorly paid, disheartened, overburdened teachers to dump on when the next survey results show US children dropping far behind those from such education centers as Bulgaria and India.
Who are they gone to blame? Their teachers. In this case the teachers are the parents an we all know how kids like to dump on their parents.
Education is over-rated, anyhow. In a country where George Dubbya Bush can be voted into office – twice – and in a country where the big banks can loot the US Treasury for 100 cents on the dollar for bad loans without even a peep out of the general population, education is far less important than rushing to get seated for the next airing of Jersey Shore.
I’ve been working on a game plan to bring the US back to financial dominance on the world stage. Instead of concentrating on education, the US should be pushing to make the entire country one, massive reality show for the whole world to watch. Think Jersey Shore and Bad Girls Club on a coast-to-coast scale.
I think this can happen as we now have video cameras on every highway, at every mass transportation stop, in every convenience store, in the airports, on every police car, etc. The could be the “Truman Show” and a grand scale. Please wait until I get my haircut before we begin filming.