Public Schools

Every time I openly oppose the institution of public school in our country, I am instantly, and with much vigor, contested and rebuked. Public schools are an extremely influential establishment that affects basically every person’s life in America; pretty much every person is or was in a public school, has a friend or has family involved in it or is even employed by public schools in one way or another, and the majority of these people readily support and stand by the public schools, but this is only because they don’t necessarily understand the true nature of our public schooling and have not looked at it under the right light. Of course, there are good aspects of public schools, but those aspects that are contrary to so many vital principles far outweigh the good that public schools bring about, and hopefully I can shed enough light on this topic that you will wholeheartedly agree with me.

Some argue, “Public schools offer such great education; how would we teach the children without them?” To which I will simply reply, no, public schools don’t offer that great of an education and it is progressively getting worse. Furthermore, we could come up with much better systems of education than what we have now. Others attest, “it is free and open to all children who wish to attend,” but the reality is that it is not free for everybody but in fact very costly, and even if it were free, that would make it even more illegal than it already is. Still others may argue, “What about all those people who work for the schools? What would they do for jobs?” To which I propose that they be a part of a new system that would be better than these government run public schools. One more point of weakness that I have independently brought against myself as I formulate how a better system could be established is, “How would we make the education that children receive standard throughout the nation and not let it become random and sporadic everywhere?” To which I have found that the natural tendency of economics and human nature would create a balance. Now, being presented with these, the most common arguments that I run into, let’s discuss each point in greater depth.

“Public schools offer such great education; how would we teach the children without them?” It is true that they offer an education, not an overall great one, but an education none the less that is generic and basic. It is also true that in some subjects they have the necessary facilities and trained teachers to offer a fairly good comprehension of the subject. Public schools are also very convenient for parents; while a parent is off at work, it is very fitting to their schedule to send their kids off to school and let it babysit them, this is especially true if both parents work or if it is a single working parent. Another fact is that because the curriculum is regulated by the federal government, it makes it so every kid in the nation is learning the same thing as any other kid which establishes a standard for everyone, a canon if you will.

But in response to these issues, first, the education is pretty poor. According to Steven L. West, Ph.D., public schools produced 700,000 high school graduates “…are not even able read their own diplomas,” (West, Steven L. Linguistics: Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It. San Francisco CATESOL Conference. April 7. 2006) and I doubt it has gotten any better since then. ABC’s reporter John Stossel in a report called ‘Stupid in America,’ says:

I talked with 18-year-old Dorian Cain in South Carolina, who was still struggling to read a single sentence in a first-grade level book when I met him. Although his public schools had spent nearly $100,000 on him over 12 years, he still couldn’t read. So “20/20″ sent Dorian to a private learning center, Sylvan, to see if teachers there could teach Dorian to read when the South Carolina public schools failed to. Using computers and workbooks, Dorian’s reading went up two grade levels — after just 72 hours of instruction.

This is only one example out of the 700,000 who get their diplomas.

Now, I am not against schools for the public, just so long as they are ran by individuals or private institutions just as any business in the nation today instead of set up like a monopoly and ran and supported by the government. In a system where the schools function as businesses, the competition would force every school and its competitor to offer the best education at the cheapest price, and they would, through their clients, have enough money to supply each student with the tools and facilities necessary to get their education. An alternate system, built up of these competing factions, would also have many of the same attributes of the schools today, so parents would still be able to go to work and not have to worry about their kids because they would still have similar schedules, or it could be possible to find a school whose hours better fit their schedule.
“It is free and open to all children who wish to attend.” That is true for the children, but their parents have to pay. It is true that you don’t need to pay the school directly, but according the Federal Department of Education’s (FDE) home page, it spends 67.2 billion dollars on 122,000 public schools that administer to a total of 56 million students, and where does the federal government get its money - from tax paying citizens. Because the FDE puts so much money into education, the federal government has to compensate for it by taking more taxes out of our incomes, our transactions, our registrations and everything else we get taxed by the government on, and knowing how the government is, it probably takes more from us, in the name of national education, than it needs and goes to schools. Stossel says, “The average per-pupil cost today is an astonishing $10,000 per student — $200,000 per classroom!” Now just imagine what kind of school parents could put their children in if that money stayed in their hands instead of giving it to the government for them to decide.
Even if the government did somehow make schools completely free, it would be in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States of America - the law of the land that made this country so great in so little time thus proving it’s greatness. Something that is illegal is so because it is contrary to the law. The law is the Constitution and it establishes a free enterprise system. The antithesis of the Constitution is the Communist Manifesto wherein it establishes communism of all the raw materials among the people. The tenth plank of this manifesto, all ten being necessary to establish Communism, ensures, “Free education for all children in public schools” (p38); this flies right in the face of the Constitution and is openly illegal.
“What about all those people who work for the schools? What would they do for jobs?” Again, we must remember, I am not against the principle of schools for the public; I am just against the public school system we have set up in America today. If a teacher was looking for a job, they could go to the various schools that would be set up, in a business like fashion, and if they are qualified to teach and the school wishes to hire them, they could be secured with a job, and if they are not qualified, they should not have been teaching in the first place. The fact that schools could compete for customers, as it were - not that I’m trying to downsize the sacredness of individuals-, would more than likely cause more schools to spring up than are in existence now which would in turn create many more job opportunities than there are now for those wishing to teach.
“How would we make the education that children receive standard throughout the nation and not let it become random and sporadic everywhere?” Because the schools would be functioning as businesses, the ones that produced results wherein the children could not function well in society would lose customers and profits and eventually go under, whereas the schools that were doing exemplary jobs in training well functioning citizens would be getting nothing but more income and investments and so they could beat out the competition. By nature, the schools would be doing everything that everybody would be asking of them and needing them to produce or they will cease to exist in the market, and because of the heated competition that the schools would be pressured with on all sides would push them to do tremendous jobs at the lowest possible costs for parents and the economy would be thriving and the schools would basically be producing geniuses.
Government run public schools should have no place in our free republican system of government. They benefit nothing to society that could not be better implemented by another system, and they also do great damage to our beloved country by holding its futures potential back from full capacity and wasting money left and right on attempting to do so.

Public schools should not answer to the government and be rewarded or punished by the fat cats in Washington for their merits or flaws; this nations children are not the governments children; they are part of what makes society, family. The public schools should be answering to the parents of these children. With a generation or two who have been taught what the government has wanted them to learn, how are we to maintain checks and balances not only within government but against government as individuals.

Ezra Taft Benson in General Conference of October 1970 said, “As a watchman on the tower, I feel to warn you that one of the chief means of misleading our youth and destroying the family unit is our educational institutions. President Joseph F. Smith referred to false educational ideas as one of the three threatening dangers among our Church members… The tenth plank in Karl Marx’s Manifesto for destroying our kind of civilization advocated the establishment of “free education for all children in public schools.” There were several reasons why Marx wanted government to run the schools. Dr. A. A. Hodge pointed out one of them when he said, “It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter in how small a minority the atheists or agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and widespread instrument for the propagation of atheism which the world has ever seen.” (A. A. Hodge: Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, 1887, Presbyterian Board of Publications) After the tragic prayer decision was made by the Court, President David O. McKay stated, “The Supreme Court of the United States severs the connecting cord between the public schools of the United States and the source of divine intelligence, the Creator, himself.” (Relief Society Magazine, December 1962, p. 878.)

this other topic that this quote introduces is religion in schools. Under a business like system, the schools could teach whatever religion they wanted to just so long as the parents approved, but I will go into more depth on the separation of church and state in another page.