Quote:
Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan
Notification and the right to withdraw your child from education willy-nilly aren't the same thing at all.
I guess what I dispute is the notion that this is a "right" in a fundamental sense at all. Parents don't own their children. Period. Children are human beings who own themselves. Parents have a duty toward their children, not a right to control them or what they learn. As soon as you accept the notion that teaching subject X somehow infringes on the rights of a person who isn't even in the room when it's being taught, you vastly over-complicate the project of a public education, which has a very specific and special purpose. Personally, I don't want parents, some of whom might have an itchy "outrage-trigger," anywhere near that process.
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I work in education and have for a long time. Giving them credit over parents is comedy hour. They know what they are doing? They may have indeed attended an institution and got a degree or two but converting that to they know what they are doing--Nope. I could write for hours on the pathetic curriculum's, hopeless inept teachers, stupid new inititatives and on and on and on. I have zero difficulty understanding why dang near every parent I know is hunting down options for private schools, charter schools and any other option. Don't put the public education system up there on any pedestal. You better want them in the process cause sooner rather than later the number of charter schools alone will be ballooning even faster than they are now.
I've had my own kids in private school every chance I get/can afford. One of the best things is the far greater parent say in what goes on/is taught etc. All kinds of opt out's included. Everything for special times/classes/exams etc. for hockey players et. al. to more fine arts and top notch teachers paid more than the herd in the public schools. Discipline alone enough of a factor for me to not put my kids in public school. I tried my one son after we got back from China in a nearby school and during a performance the kids were unruly and noisy and the teachers sat there with their fingers up their noses. He was out the next day.
Yep I'll be making the decisions concerning my children's education and they will very much be better for my kid's.